Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia 9780824892234

Citation preview

Queer Transfigurations

Allison Alexy Series Editor

Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s–1970s Daisy Yan Du Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea Edited by S. Heijin Lee, Monika Mehta, and Robert Ji-Song Ku Puppets, Gods, and Brands: Theorizing the Age of Animation from Taiwan Teri Silvio Legacies of the Drunken Master: Politics of the Body in Hong Kong Kung Fu Comedy Films Luke White Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia Edited by James Welker

Queer Transfigurations Boys Love Media in Asia

edited by

James Welker

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2022 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing, 2022 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Welker, James, editor. Title: Queer transfigurations : boys love media in Asia / edited by James  Welker. Other titles: Asia pop! Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022. | Series: Asia   pop! | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021046862 | ISBN 9780824888992 (hardback) | ISBN   9780824892234 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780824892241 (epub) | ISBN   9780824892852 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Boys love (Narrative genre)—History and criticism. | Boys   love (Narrative genre)—Public opinion. | Popular   culture—Asia—Japanese influences. Classification: LCC PN6714 .Q44 2022 | DDC  809/.93352664095—dc23/eng/20220202 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046862 Cover image by PenguinFrontier. Used with permission. Copyright 2013. Website: facebook.com/PenguinFrontier University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Note on Language and Names 1 Introduction: Boys Love (BL) Media and Its Asian Transfigurations   James Welker

xiii

1

Part I  East Asia China 2 Between BL and Slash: Danmei Fiction, Transcultural Mediation, and Changing Gender Norms in Contemporary China    Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

19

3 Breaking the Structural Silence: The Sociological Function of Danmei Novels in Contemporary China   Xi Lin

31

4 BL as a “Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan   Thomas Baudinette

42

5 Straight Men, Gay Buddies: The Chinese BL Boom and Its Impact on Male Homosociality   Wei Wei

55

Hong Kong 6 “Send Them to Mars!”: Boys Love Erotica and Civil Rights in Hong Kong    Katrien Jacobs and Han Hau Lai

68

v

vi Contents

South Korea 7 The Commercialization and Popularization of Boys Love in South Korea   Jungmin Kwon 8 Rethinking the Meaning of Boys Love in an Era of Feminism: Online Discourse on “Leaving BL” in Late 2010s Korea   Hyojin Kim

80

92

Taiwan 9 Repression or Revolution?: On the Taiwanese BL Fan Community’s Reactions to the Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Movement   Peiti Wang

108

Part II  Southeast Asia Indonesia 10 Hiding in Plain Sight: Boys Love Content at Indonesia’s “Comic Frontier”    Kania Arini Sukotjo

125

11 Dissonant Passions: Indonesian Boys Love Fans’ Identity Negotiation and Perspectives on LGBT Issues    Gita Pramudita Prameswari

138

Philippines 12 BL Coupling in a Different Light: Filipino Fans Envisioning an Alternative Model of Intimacy    Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin

153

Singapore 13 Docile BL Bodies: Boys Love under State and Societal Censorship in Singapore   Aerin Lai

167

Thailand 14 The Queer if Limited Effects of Boys Love Manga Fandom in Thailand   Poowin Bunyavejchewin

181

Contentsvii

15  Faen of Gay Faen: Realizing Boys Love in Thailand betwixt Imagination and Existence    Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge

194

Part III  South Asia India 16  Desi Desu: Sex, Sexuality, and BL Consumption in Urban India   Lakshmi Menon

211

Part IV  Border Crossing 17 Glocalization of Boys Love Dōjinshi in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia    Kristine Michelle Santos 18 On the Psychology, Physicality, and Communication Strategies of Male Fans of BL in East Asia: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Men’s Desires to “Become” Fudanshi   Kazumi Nagaike 19 From Legends to Games to Homoerotic Fiction: Dynasty Warriors BL Texts from China, Japan, and Taiwan    Asako P. Saito Afterword: Boys Love as a World-Shaping Genre   James Welker

227

243

257

272

Contributors

279

Index

287

Series Editor’s Preface

In one of my courses a few years ago, a student was elated when he learned we would be reading manga in class—and then dismayed: “Oh no, it’s BL.” Luckily and unsurprisingly, his fellow students had more interest in the popular Boys Love genre, and we had a live instance of BL dismissiveness to analyze together. I imagine that anyone picking up Queer Transfigurations will not need to be convinced that BL is worth reading or worthy of scholarly attention. By centering BL and tracing the category’s shifts across cultures and reading communities, the volume considers vibrant questions about fandom, minoritized characters and readers, and postcolonial counterpublics and identities. Although BL stories are stereotypically created and consumed by cisgender, hetero young women, contributors to this work beautifully demonstrate how expansive the readership has become. As James Welker says in the Introduction, the genre gives readers who don’t see themselves, or their full selves, reflected in mainstream popular culture “room to breathe.” For many, BL is an extremely generative and creative space; Queer Transfigurations readers will, I’m sure, feel similarly about this book.

ix

Acknowledgments

The project that became Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia was sparked by a question in July 2016 from Peter Jackson, who, intrigued by the explosion he was witnessing of Thai translations of boys love (BL) manga from Japan, wrote to Dredge Kang, Thomas Baudinette, Mark McLelland, and me asking about the existence of scholarship on what he was seeing. The ensuing discussion motivated me to bring together scholars working on BL around Asia, and almost a year to the day later, I held “Queer Transfigurations: International Symposium on Boys Love Media in Asia” at my institutional home, Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan. Most of the papers presented at the conference were revised into the chapters that comprise this volume. (Hyojin Kim wrote a new paper for the book, while Jungmin Kwon was unable to participate in the symposium but has contributed a chapter here.) I extend hearty thanks to Peter for starting that discussion and to Dredge, Tom, and Mark for jumping in so enthusiastically, inspiring me to take on this project. (My thanks go to Peter as well for his assistance with the romanization of Thai.) In an era that will be remembered for severe budget cuts and a dramatic decrease in financial support for research in the humanities, I am also profoundly grateful to Kanagawa University for very generously funding the two-day symposium, making it possible to fly in participants from Asia, Australia, and the United States. My sincere thanks to all the presenters who took the time to prepare papers and come to Yokohama, bringing suitcases full of excitement and enthusiasm about this growing field of study. These thanks extend to the book’s contributors as well as to Feichi Chiang, who, due to unfortunate timing, was unable to provide a chapter. My gratitude goes as well to symposium discussants Patrick Galbraith, Hori Akiko, Mark McLelland (again), Mizoguchi Akiko, and Mori Naoko for the feedback they provided on the papers as well as in the formal and xi

xii Acknowledgments

informal discussions at the symposium. Additional thanks are owed to the many enthusiastic attendees at the symposium who also proffered thought-provoking questions and comments that fed rich discussions, spilling over into lively exchanges in multiple languages on Twitter. Feedback from both discussants and symposium attendees has made its way into various chapters. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on the volume as a whole and on individual chapters. This volume is truly a collective product. In addition, I am grateful to my colleague at Kanagawa University Christian Ratcliff for guiding me through the complicated application process for funding international exchange projects and to Honma Emi in the university president’s office for walking me through the details. I am also thankful to many other colleagues and staff at Kanagawa University for their assistance and support at various stages of planning. I would also like to express my gratitude to PenguinFrontier for graciously permitting me to use his beautiful illustration on the cover. Finally, my heartfelt thanks to Stephanie Chun at the University of Hawai‘i Press for guiding this volume through completion, and to Allison Alexy for her advice and for her enthusiasm about including it in the Asia Pop! series of which she is the editor. *** Versions of the chapters by Thomas Baudinette, Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge, Hyojin Kim, Lakshmi Menon, Kazumi Nagaike, Gita Pramudita Prameswari, Asako P. Saito, Peiti Wang, and Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang, as well as my own Introduction, first appeared in Japanese translation in BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā (BL opening doors: Sexuality and gender transfigured in Asia; Seidōsha, 2019), which I edited, alongside contributions by Fujimoto Yukari, Ishida Hitoshi, Hori Akiko, and Mori Naoko.

A Note on Language and Names

A volume such as this, entailing terms and names from multiple languages and cultures from a dozen countries across twenty chapters by almost two dozen authors, calls for consistency as well as compromise. This volume uses “boys love”—without an apostrophe, to keep the term open-ended—and “BL” to refer to the media genre in Japan and globally. To provide a sense of local variation, chapter authors have been asked to incorporate local terms in reference to the media and fandoms they are describing. Nevertheless, fan terminology is unstable, and, thus, usage in any chapter at best reflects current usage at the time authors conducted their research. As for transcription of languages from non-Roman scripts, in keeping as much as possible with norms across fields, all chapters follow modified versions of standard romanization systems: Chinese is transcribed using pinyin (without diacritic marks to indicate tones); Japanese, Hepburn; Korean, McCune–Reischauer; and Thai, the Thai Royal Institute system. Exceptions have been made for some personal and place names and words already known in English by another spelling, including fan terminology. Personal names are generally written in the order that is conventional in the language and culture of the person being referred to. Thus, names of individuals from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are usually written with surnames preceding given names. Exceptions have been made for individuals already well known in English and citations of scholarship by individuals who follow English name conventions in their writing in English. All contributors aside from Han Hau Lai and Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge use English name order for their own names in this volume.

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chapter 1

Introduction Boys Love (BL) Media and Its Asian Transfigurations James Welker

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of contemporary Japanese popular culture is aware of the significance of manga and anime—that is, Japanese comics and animation—both in- and outside the country. Many have likely also heard of “otaku”—passionate fans of these and related goods and media, most notably video games. Within this broad sphere, one genre of female-oriented media, primarily manga and prose fiction, that depicts male–male romantic and sexual relationships has garnered increasing public and scholarly attention over the first two decades of the current century. This genre, often traced back to early 1970s Japan, is, at present, most commonly referred to in Japanese as “boys love” (bōizurabu) and “BL” (bīēru).1 Its fans are frequently referred to and refer to themselves as “fujoshi”—a self-mocking label that transforms a polite term for “women and girls” into a novel term meaning “rotten girls/women.” In contemporary Japan, the object of fujoshi affection is wildly popular—with an estimated annual domestic market size in the 2010s ranging from 21 to 22 billion yen, or around 200 to 210 million US dollars, on sales of BL-related manga, light novels (raito noberu), anime DVDs, drama CDs, dōjinshi (fanzines), video games, cosplay products, and other goods.2 Since at least the 1980s, BL media has also had fans and creators around the globe, the number of whom has increased dramatically in the current century.3 Owing perhaps to geographic and cultural proximity, BL has found a particularly receptive home in many parts of Asia, especially East and Southeast Asia, where it has taken on new meanings and had different fan bases and cultural effects than in its country of origin. Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia takes 1

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James Welker

the BL phenomenon in the context of Asia as its focus. It is essential to note at the outset, however, that Asian BL fandoms do not exist in isolation from BL fandoms elsewhere. Indeed, as this volume demonstrates, BL fans and creators in Asia often communicate across national, regional, and cultural borders in languages such as English, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as, of course, through BL imagery. Queer Transfigurations brings together twenty-one scholars writing on BL media and its fans in a dozen countries in Asia and beyond. In addition to chapters focusing on China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan in East Asia; Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand in Southeast Asia; and India in South Asia, several chapters take a transcultural or comparative approach, adding Australia, Japan, and Malaysia to the mix. These scholars deploy tools from an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms across the region. I have chosen to frame these BL media and fandoms in Asia as “queer transfigurations” of Japanese BL and its fandom. To be sure, the majority of fans and artists involved in this sphere identify as cisgender heterosexual girls and women—though, as some chapters in this volume make clear, this media is increasingly expanding beyond that demographic. Regardless, as is common in cultural studies, broadly defined, alongside many contributors to this volume, I use “queer” here to point to gender and sexuality-related expressions and acts that flout if not work to upend social norms. From its putative origins in mainstream Japanese shōjo (girls) culture of the 1970s, a time when the sexual agency of women was only beginning to be recognized in the public arena, the creation and distribution of content depicting male–male romance and sexuality for ostensibly cisgender heterosexual adolescent girls was a deliberate attempt to unsettle—or “queer”—norms for female sexuality.4 Moreover, although it was not originally intended to promote or encourage homosexuality or rethinking of gender identities among readers, some individuals who are not necessarily cisgender or straight have found room to breathe via this media and the amorphous sphere of its fandom.5 In that sense it is queer twice over. That there is no clear line between BL and LGBT(Q) media, as multiple chapters in this volume vividly illustrate, makes BL queerer and queerer!6 The erasure outside Japan of the line between BL and LGBT(Q) media and fans that remains largely stable within it is one clear example

Introduction3

of the many ways that BL has been “transfigured” across Asia. I use “transfiguration” here and in my other writing on transnational flows of culture to point to change in transit from one culture to another. I began using this term when writing about Japanese culture to avoid the baggage of concepts like localization, glocalization, cultural hybridization, and transculturation, which, in academia in particular, often imply massive imbalances of power or largely unidirectional flows of culture and are theoretically rooted in the postcolonial experience.7 The concept of transfiguration, as I use it, calls on us to seek out and examine “ripples of change” that may extend back to the source culture,8 a point to which I will return in the Afterword of this volume. While Japan’s relationship with the “West,” particularly the United States, has never been on equal footing, it would be inaccurate to frame the Japanese experience as primarily postcolonial. To be sure, under the rubric of “Cool Japan,” the Japanese government has actively deployed its popular culture as a form of soft power whereby Japan might continue to assert its influence around the world, including in Asia.9 And, of course, most countries taken up in this volume can be described as postcolonial; indeed a majority of them have at one point been colonized or at least occupied by Japan. Yet, the circulation of BL—a very minor, and in most parts of Asia, underground genre—and the ways BL has been transformed by fans and creators often belie expectations about how postcolonial people might engage with the culture of their former colonizer. Accordingly, Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu describe the circulation of BL in the context of China in particular as a form of “cultural globalization from below.”10 Similarly, writing about global or specifically anglophone fans, Mark McLelland and Andrea Wood have each framed BL fandom as a global counterpublic.11 As the chapters in this volume collectively illustrate, BL fans in Asia can indeed be seen in such a light. I would wager that most BL fans in Asia are well aware—to borrow from Michael Warner’s definition of counterpublics—of both their socially subordinate status as members of a BL fandom and the role their participation in that fandom plays in how their own “identities are formed and transformed.”12 Having now introduced the framing rubric and scope of Queer Transfigurations, rather than provide a summary of each of its chapters, I will use the remainder of this Introduction to think through some issues these chapters raise. In short, I see four major overlapping attributes of BL and its fandoms that these studies bring to the fore, themes I have

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already touched upon. The first is that BL is a transnational and transcultural media phenomenon. Second, BL is a useful tool for unsettling gender and sexual norms. To that end, third, BL cannot be separated from LGBT(Q) issues, including politics. That leads me, finally, to the observation that BL is political. To those familiar with BL and its fandoms in the context of Japan, these themes may not be surprising, even if they are not often articulated in quite these terms. Exploring them through studies of BL media and fandoms across Asia demonstrates in various ways how these attributes inhere in the BL genre.

BL as a Transnational Media Phenomenon BL is fundamentally transnational and transcultural media. This is true even in the context of Japan, where BL’s earliest incarnation in the form of shōjo manga (girls’ comics) was building upon layers of transnational, transcultural borrowing and transfiguration dating back to the Meiji period.13 This is to say nothing of the multiple ways the gender and sexuality being challenged and toyed with via BL in any given culture are themselves transnational, transcultural constructs. By way of elaboration, I propose that the chapters in this volume may be seen to serve as windows onto ways BL media is actually a part of the multiplex processes whereby local understandings of gender and sexuality in Asia are continuously being reconsidered and reshaped.14 In most cases, BL media seems to have been initially imported physically or digitally from Japan into other Asian countries in the form of manga, translated and consumed by members of a nascent fandom. While manga remains highly popular, today Japanese BL media also circulates as anime, prose fiction, and live-action dramas, among other forms of media, as well as in the form of locally produced derivative works distributed online and at fan events. From the beginning, BL has often circulated around Asia and elsewhere as pirated translations, including scanlations, fansubs, and fandubs.15 While this makes BL more accessible to fans with limited financial resources, the financial impact on Japanese producers is among the multiple implications of piracy almost never taken up in the scholarship on the circulation of BL (or other genres of Japanese media), as Mizoguchi Akiko urgently reminds us.16 BL may have made its way into East Asia first, by the late 1980s, if not earlier. For instance, BL works may have first entered Taiwan as

Introduction5

early as the late 1970s in the form of pirated translations of commercially published shōjo manga.17 While those early translations have yet to be documented with any certainty, BL had clearly made it to Taiwan a decade later in the form of translations of Japanese dōjinshi (fanzines) featuring homoerotic narratives based on popular shōnen (boys) manga and anime such as Saint Seiya, as noted by Peiti Wang in this volume. Similarly, as Jungmin Kwon outlines in her chapter, BL culture in South Korea seems to have emerged in the 1980s surrounding the production and consumption of dōjinshi, called tonginchi (sometimes Romanized donginji) in Korean. A boom in “yaoi” (an earlier Japanese label for BL also used in Korea) appears to have been sparked by pirated translations of Japanese commercial BL in the early 1990s. That boom is still going strong, most recently taking in the spheres of webtoons (wept’un, online comics) and online fan fiction and novels, the cultural politics of which Kwon explores in her chapter. Yang and Xu date the introduction of pirated BL manga into China to around the same time, the early 1990s, a period which saw an influx of many kinds of manga from Japan.18 In China, BL is generally referred to as danmei, the Chinese pronunciation of tanbi, a Japanese word meaning “aesthetic” that has been used in Japan as a label for BL. In China, online prose fiction is the dominant form of danmei media. The community of fans and creators of online danmei fiction encompasses people in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and diasporic Chinese communities elsewhere.19 As Asako Saito shows in her chapter, the production and circulation of sinophone BL media, including fan works, sometimes links back to Japan. What “the ongoing circulation of texts across BL communities” in China, Japan, and Taiwan draws into particular relief is, as Saito demonstrates, the difficulty of “categoriz[ing] the communities as discrete and their texts as totally indigenous to a particular place.” This point is made clear in multiple chapters in this volume. For instance, Yang and Xu show how in part due to a blurring with homoerotic anglophone slash fiction, the increasingly broad category danmei is no longer synonymous with what has heretofore been understood to be Japanese-origin BL. In addition to this blurring with slash—including Alpha/Beta/ Omega or Omegaverse, an originally anglophone genre that has recently found a home in the Japanese BL sphere—the supposed Japanese origin of BL is eroding in other ways and other spaces. In Vietnam, for instance, translated Chinese danmei fiction—called “đam mỹ” in

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Vietnamese—supplanted BL from Japan in terms of popularity in the 2010s, if not earlier;20 more recently Vietnamese BL works are being produced and circulating online, alongside media produced by the LGBT(Q) community, that bear more similarity to Thai BL series and Korean dramas than to anything from either Japan or China.21 The history of BL in Thailand, traced by Poowin Bunyavejchewin in his chapter, may date as far back as the 1980s, and it has truly exploded in recent years. Today, as Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge observes in this volume, “Thailand plays a medial role in BL . . . regionally, acting as a node where popular culture is indigenized, reformulated, and then ­consumed abroad in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South America,” along with Korea and Japan, two countries which themselves blur in the Thai cultural imagination. Thai fans sometimes see Korean and Japanese culture collectively—that is, “Korpanese” ­culture, as Kang-Nguyễn puts it—as the origin of BL. Thomas Baudinette has outlined elsewhere “how . . . BL has become dislocated from Japan and reconfigured as a fundamentally Thai phenomenon” among fans in the Philippines.22 Coming full circle, the popularity of live-action Thai BL dramas exploded in Japan in 2020, a phenomenon to which I will return in the Afterword. In Thailand, BL has also manifested in recent years in new forms of fandoms of minor celebrities, including fandoms of actual gay couples, a phenomenon Kang-Nguyễn examines in his chapter. Following real gay couples would seem anathema to most BL fans, whose fan practices far more commonly entail “shipping”—short for “relationshipping”— seemingly heterosexual individuals, including fictional characters and real celebrities. The practice of shipping—or “coupling” (kappuringu) as it is called in Japanese—is but one of a range of BL patterns and tropes that have been transfigured by fans elsewhere as well, including by Malaysian artist PenguinFrontier, whose subversion of fixed ship roles is discussed by Kristine Michelle Santos in her chapter. And in China, a genre of danmei fiction has recently emerged called hugong­ wen, which entails the coupling of two gong (roughly meaning top; in Japanese seme) characters rather than a gong and a shou (bottom; uke), as Xi Lin explains in his chapter. In Japan, as elsewhere, coupling is one of a range of BL practices that serve to unsettle gender and sexual norms, the topic of the next section. BL continues to circulate online around Asia, sometimes evading local norms condemning or prohibiting content with homosexual or

Introduction7

pornographic themes. And sometimes, in spite of these norms, BL fans and creators are able to share BL works at fan conventions, some of whose attendees and artists come from around the region if not further afield. These conventions include broadly themed conventions, in Indonesia, where, as Kania Arini Sukotjo details in her chapter, BL has managed to “hide in plain sight,” and in Singapore, where creators engage in strategies such as hiding risqué works “under the table” to avoid trouble from authorities or the general public, as described by Aerin Lai in this volume. Some narrowly themed BL events, such as Manila’s BLush Convention, have operated for a number of years,23 while others, such as Jakarta’s Royal Boys Love Convention, discussed by Gita Pramudita Prameswari in her chapter, have quickly run into trouble due to conflicts with local religious and cultural norms as well as regulations. While such obstacles remain, BL seems to be working to unsettle gender and sexual norms among, within, and beyond such Asian BL fandoms.

BL as a Disruptor of Gender and Sexual Norms BL has always been about unsettling gender and sexual norms. In early 1970s Japan, BL, then called “shōnen’ai”—meaning love by or for boys—was developed by a new generation of young women artists as part of an effort to elevate commercially published shōjo manga, theretofore largely drawn by male artists, into a more mature, literary form.24 Shōnen’ai, a new genre focused on male characters was specifically created to circumvent rigid patriarchal norms restricting the gender and sexual expression of its adolescent girl readers by, among other things, foregrounding the possibility that female readers might identify with male characters—including in romantic and erotic scenarios. By the mid-1970s, young fans had begun creating their own homoerotic narratives and scenarios in the amateur scene, coupling their favorite rock stars or characters from manga and anime for boys into works that ranged from mildly romantic to graphically sexual, thereby claiming even male-oriented texts as their own as well as the would-be male gaze itself.25 Drawing on a groundbreaking narrative analysis by Nagakubo Yōko, Fujimoto Yukari has traced how the aforementioned practice of coupling has, over time, shifted in function from a means to play with sex—that is, vicarious sexual experimentation—to a means to play with

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James Welker

gender.26 Specifically, while seme and uke characters may seem to be replicating the normative gender dichotomy through the assumption of more masculine top and more feminine bottom sexual and social roles—a critique discussed by Hyojin Kim in her chapter about the context of Korea—there are many types of seme and uke characters and each character’s gender characteristics make sense and shift relative to the character with whom he is coupled.27 Thus, beyond claiming the male gaze for female readers and beyond foregrounding the possibility of transgender identification inherent in BL in Japan, the practice of coupling exposes the mutability of gender, allowing, in the words of Judith Butler, the “posit[ing of] possibilities beyond the norm or, indeed, a different future for the norm itself.”28 For instance, based on a study of the largely middle-class BL female fans in the Philippines, Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin shows in this volume that these fans see the relative androgyny of the male characters and the nature of the male–male relationships in BL as offering “an alternative model of not just masculinity, but also of intimate relationships.” In a similar vein, Lin argues that in the aforementioned hugong­ wen genre in China, the coupling of masculine tops offers a model of a different kind of equality within a relationship, and, as Lin shows, “the genre constructs an alternative masculinity as a form of queer resistance to the dominant, heteronormative, and hegemonic notion of masculinity.” BL may also be shaping both the gender and sexual practices of heterosexually identified men who consume it, as Kazumi Nagaike discusses in her chapter, which examines male fans, or fudanshi (rotten men/ boys), in Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. Nagaike hypothesizes that BL is liberatory for even heterosexual male readers “because BL enables them to escape the oppressive burden of . . . masculine stereotypes.” BL even seems to have an impact on nonconsumers. In this volume, Wei Wei explores how danmei themes and aesthetics are reshaping heteromasculinity among urban youth in China. Wei notes that the underground circulation of BL/danmei has led to a heightened awareness of the possibility of “male homoerotic desire and relationships,” while also creating new space—or reopening space—for same-sex intimacy among heterosexual males. It is essential to remember, however, that, while there are a significant and increasing number of exceptions, the male characters in same-sex relationships in BL are most often not intended to be “gay”

Introduction9

but rather simply two boys or men who are drawn to one other. For many fans, the against-the-odds nature of such a relationship adds to its beauty, no matter how graphically their sexual activities are depicted, including works featuring practices such as bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism (generally subsumed under the acronym BDSM). Regardless, many fans in Japan have long blurred straight and gay in their own imaginations.29 The same is true elsewhere in Asia.

BL as a Device for Rethinking LGBT(Q) Issues Japan’s lack of a strong traditional religious prohibition has frequently been used to explain its relative cultural openness to homosexuality as well as to transgender identities and practices. Taboos in contemporary Japan related to being homosexual or transgender are rooted in a sense of deviance from cultural norms rather than sin. To the extent that BL is taboo in Japan, this is arguably not so much because the content focuses on male–male sexuality specifically but because the content focuses on sexuality at all and is largely produced by and for women who sexually objectify men through their fan practices—in the face of norms for femininity which discourage or proscribe public assertion of sexual agency. Condemnation of homosexuality (and being transgender) on moral grounds, often rooted in religious belief, is a much stronger cultural force elsewhere in Asia. Its relationship to BL and BL fandom has been a central issue in many parts of Asia, sometimes extending an interest from fantasies about male–male intimacy toward a heightened awareness of and sensitivity toward LGBT(Q) issues. In Indonesia, as Gita Pramudita Prameswari writes in this volume, BL was often the first encounter the young middle-class, university-educated women with whom she spoke had with the idea of homosexuality. Many BL fans in Indonesia are conflicted about their fandom of BL and resist relating it to real-world LGBT issues, while some have been provoked by BL to reconsider their own religious values regarding homosexuality. In India as well, Lakshmi Menon writes in her chapter, many BL fans have similarly first been exposed to homosexuality through their encounter with the genre. Some have gone on to consider the real lives of members of the LGBT community and have come to an awareness of the problem of what, discussing the Japanese BL of the 1990s to

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James Welker

early 2000s, Ishida Hitoshi has described as “representational appropriation” of images of gay men.30 Some female BL fans have taken their BL-derived awareness of the social problems confronting gay men and other gender and sexual minorities and become more actively involved in LGBT(Q) activism. In recent years in Taiwan, for instance, some funü—rotten women, a Taiwanese term for fujoshi—have been involved in the movement to legalize same-sex marriage in the country, a subject Peiti Wang explores in this volume. However, in China, explains Thomas Baudinette in his chapter, many gay-identified BL fans with whom he spoke initially saw Japan in an unrealistically positive light on account of BL. When those most in thrall to BL decided to study Japanese and come to Japan, however, the realities of life for LGBT(Q) people and the racism they encountered within the gay community generally disabused them of that idea quite quickly. And yet, while Japan may not be a gay utopia, as I have noted, the BL genre continues to inspire and provoke.

BL as a Sociopolitical Force in the World In her Theorizing BL as a Transformative Genre (BL shinkaron), prominent BL scholar Mizoguchi Akiko has described BL as a progressive force for good.31 Yet, BL fans and creators in Japan largely steer clear of overt political engagement. To be sure, some BL fans and BL-inspired others have occasionally gazed at politics through their “fuirutā”—their “rotten filters,” a term combining the rotten “fu” of fujoshi with “filter” (firutā)—the lenses through which they see the world. A mid-2019 search of the popular pixiv website, for example, turned up a handful of images coupling former US president Donald Trump and former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzō. But such an application of BL to contemporary Japanese or global politics is hardly common in BL fan activities and media. If they engage in politics at all, BL fans in Japan are more likely to be focused on issues such as the potential impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty on their derivative works or moves to further restrict sexual content—issues of broad concern to fan communities in Japan and elsewhere.32 In short, in Japan politics are not prominent in BL fan discourse and BL is not prominent in political discourse at present. But this is not the case everywhere. Indeed, in recent years, BL has been put to visible use in very prominent political arenas. As noted

Introduction11

above, many Taiwanese funü were active in the successful movement for same-sex marriage in their country. In nearby Hong Kong, in the face of seeming vulnerability, as Katrien Jacobs and Han Hau Lai write in their chapter, BL fans mobilized the genre as a tool through which to engage with local politics, such as during the Umbrella Movement led by democracy activists between late 2014 and early 2015. While the BL fans Jacobs and Han studied generally saw BL as a means of escape from the world, some engaged in a sort of online political critique, coupling handsome young male activists alongside political rivals as a way to lightly comment on and “soothe a larger political crisis.” In recent years, South Korea has also seen BL and its fans become entangled in political and legal controversies. In mid-2016, for example, a controversy emerged in Korea pitting feminists alongside BL artists and fans, or hujoshi (the Korean pronunciation of fujoshi), against male odeokku (otaku). In the face of a perceived threat from the women, odeokku reported erotic BL content to both the police and religious ­conservatives in an attempt to stifle women’s voices and media—even at the risk that the men’s own pornographic content might also be censored.33 More recently, as Hyojin Kim outlines in her chapter in this volume, a number of hujoshi have decided to “leave BL” (t’albiel)—a ­concept that is both movement and a Twitter hashtag. Some of the criticism of BL echoes critiques in Japan dating back to a debate among artists and fans, former artists and fans, and gay men in the early 1990s.34 As Kim shows, feminist politics are being marshalled both in defense of BL and in defense of the movement to leave it behind, with attention to what BL—a genre in which women are largely invisible—may mean for women’s status in Korean society. Given the alliances that hujoshi have formed with gay men, however, in Korea as in Japan, BL seems to have inherent within it the power, suggested by Mizoguchi, to “move the world forward.”35

In sum, through their examination of the various ways BL has been engaged with and transfigured around Asia, the chapters in Queer Transfigurations demonstrate that boys love is a transnational, trans­ cultural media genre with a great deal of potential. BL has the potential to raise awareness of gender issues, thereby facilitating the liberation of gender and sexual expression, not just of young female fans but even of cisgender heterosexual men who are not necessarily fans themselves. To

12

James Welker

that end, BL is also queer, in the sense that it both flouts and facilitates the flouting of gender and sexual norms, making space for LGBT(Q) individuals to breathe a little easier. It has also been pushing some heterosexual cisgender fans to reconsider the rights and social standing of members of the LGBT(Q) community. It even has the potential to motivate them to engage in activism. In those ways and more, then, BL is political. This calls to mind the feminist slogan “the personal is political,” which first appeared in print in 1970—the same year as the first commercial BL manga.36 An apt slogan indeed! For when it comes down to the level of the individual, the fan, the artist—whether in Taipei or Tokyo, in Bangkok or Beijing, or circulating somewhere in between—when it comes down to the practice of reading and writing narratives about two guys in love with or lust for one another, when it comes down to the ways BL as a practice can provoke an individual to rethink her life and the world around her, when it really comes down to it, BL is personal too.

A Note on the Structure of This Volume Organizing chapters into edited collections is often challenging. This volume is no exception. Most chapters in Queer Transfigurations resonate with more than one of the four themes upon which I have just elaborated, rendering it impractical to use them as a grouping device. Similarly, many chapters variously take up multiple other possible topics by which the chapters might be grouped, such as fandom, history, localization, and the emergence of BL-adjacent media and practices. Lacking a better option, I have opted to organize the chapters by region and country with the exception of three chapters that take comparative or (trans)regional approaches, which I have placed under the rubric of border crossing. This approach has several unfortunate shortfalls. One, the balance of chapters may give a false impression of the relative ­significance and scale of BL in specific countries and cultures, when, more than anything, it represents the balance of researchers working on and capable of publishing research on BL in English in this emerging field of study. For example, BL’s presence in greater China is more deeply rooted and its fandom far more expansive than in India, and thus the four chapters focused on mainland China, one on Taiwan, and one on Hong Kong plus two border-crossing chapters that examine these countries in contrast with the single chapter on India reflects the

Introduction13

relatively tiny scale of BL fandom in India. The absence of a chapter on Vietnam in contrast with two on Indonesia, however, merely reflects my inability to find a researcher able to contribute a chapter on Vietnam to this volume. Equally important, as the chapters themselves illustrate, national and regional borders are highly porous when it comes to BL fandoms and media, and, thus, grouping chapters under headings like “China,” “Indonesia,” and “Southeast Asia” may give a false impression of clear-cut borders between countries and regions that are not so clear in the lives of fans and the texts they share and celebrate.

Notes 1. “Boys love” is also sometimes written “boys’ love” and, less commonly, “boy’s love.” In this volume, the term is written without an apostrophe to keep the term open-ended. See Mark McLelland and James Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 19 n2. 2.  Yano Keizai Kenkyūsho, “‘Otaku shijō’ ni kan suru chōsa o jisshi (2017nen),” press release, December 5, 2017, https://www.yano.co.jp/press /press.php/001773. 3.  James Welker, “Boys Love (Yaoi), and the Global Circulation of,” in Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, ed. Howard Chiang, Anjali Arondekar, Marc Epprecht, Jennifer Evans, Ross Forman, Hanadi al-Samman, Emily Skidmore, and Zeb Tortorici (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 2019), 265–267. 4.  James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love in Shôjo Manga,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 3 (2006); see also James Welker, “A Brief History of Shōnen’ai, Yaoi, and Boys Love,” in McLelland et al., Boys Love Manga and Beyond. 5. Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent”; James Welker, “Lilies of the Margin: Beautiful Boys and Queer Female Identities in Japan,” in AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Genders and Sexualities, ed. Fran Martin, Peter A. Jackson, Mark McLelland, and Audrey Yue (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008). 6.  In this chapter and the Afterword, I use LGBT(Q)—which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer—to reflect the fact that, at present, in some cultures taken up in this volume, LGBT is most commonly

14

James Welker

used, while in others, LGBTQ is more common. Other versions used less commonly in these communities include the addition of a + symbol with the intent of making the acronym more open-ended or letters such as I for “intersex,” A for “asexual” or “ally,” P for “pansexual,” and so on. 7.  See James Welker, Transfigurations: Redefining Women in Late TwentiethCentury Japan (University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming). 8. Welker, Transfigurations. 9. On the government’s ongoing efforts to brand Japan as cool, see Katja Valaskivi, “A Brand New Future? Cool Japan and the Social Imaginary of the Branded Nation,” Japan Forum 25, no. 4 (2013). 10.  Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom and Cultural Globalization from Below,” in Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017). 11.  Mark McLelland, “The World of Yaoi: The Internet, Censorship and The Global ‘Boys’ Love’ Fandom,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 23, no. 1 (2005): 71, 75; Andrea Wood, “‘Straight’ Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1/2 (Spring 2006). 12.  Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 121. 13.  Welker, “A Brief History,” 42–50. 14.  See Fujimoto Yukari’s analysis of shifts in Japanese BL fan practices in her “The Evolution of BL as ‘Playing with Gender’: Viewing the Genesis and Development of BL from a Contemporary Perspective,” trans. Joanna Quimby, in McLelland et al., Boys Love Manga and Beyond. 15. “Scanlation” is most often used to describe graphic works that pirates have digitally scanned and replaced their original text with text in another language, while “fansub” and “fandub” are labels for anime that have been subtitled or dubbed by fans. 16. While Mizoguchi Akiko has made such comments in multiple forums, I am referring specifically to her comments during “Queer Transfigurations: International Symposium on Boys Love Media in Asia,” at Kanagawa University, July 1–2, 2017. 17. Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: Japanese Homoerotic Manga as Trans-National Taiwan Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (2012): 367. 18.  Yang and Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom,” 4.

Introduction15

19.  Yang and Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom,” 11–14. 20.  Trịnh Minh Đỗ Uyên and Nguyễn Quốc Bình, “The Development of Boys Love in Vietnam: From Manga and Danmei Fiction to the Football Turf,” Mechademia: Second Arc 13 (2020): 148–149. 21.  On LGBT(Q) web series, see Thi Huyen Linh Nguyen, “Reading the Youtube Sitcom My Best Gay Friends: What It Means to Be Gay in Vietnam,” Continuum 30, no. 5 (2019). Thanks to Thomas Baudinette for the reference and observing the connection to Korean dramas. 22.  Thomas Baudinette, “Creative Misreadings of ‘Thai BL’ by a Filipino Fan Community: Dislocating Knowledge Production in Transnational Queer Fandoms through Aspirational Consumption,” Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020). 23. Fen Garza and Kristene Michelle Santos, with James Welker, “Queering Fandoms from the Periphery? A Conversation between Queer Fan Event Organizers in Mexico and the Philippines,” Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020): 119–122. 24.  This is discussed in interviews with Masuyama Norie and Takemiya Keiko in Ishida Minori, Hisoyaka na kyōiku: “Yaoi/bōizurabu” zenshi (Kyoto: Rakuho Shuppan, 2008). 25.  Welker, “A Brief History,” 53–59. 26.  Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 85. 27.  Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 85. 28.  Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 28. 29. Welker, “Lilies of the Margin”; James Welker, “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in Shōjo Manga,” Mechademia 6 (2011). 30.  Ishida Hitoshi, “‘Hottoite kudasai’ to iu hyōmei o megutte: Yaoi/ BL no jiritsusei to hyōshō no ōdatsu,” Yurīka 39, no. 16 (December 2007). More recent Japanese BL has shifted toward more realistic representation of actual gay men and the social problems with which they are often confronted. See Ishida Hitoshi, “Tokyo Shinjuku no gei shīn ni okeru deai to ‘tayōsei’: Torendo na deai no kūkan ni chakume shite,” in BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sei, ed. James Welker (Tokyo: Seidōsha, 2019), 165–167. 31.  Mizoguchi Akiko, BL shinkaron: Bōizurabu ga shakai o ugokasu (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 2015). 32.  See, e.g., Yamada Tarō, Ogino Kōtarō, Sakai Takatoshi, and Nagayama Kaoru, eds., Manga no jiyū: Heisei kara Reiwa e (Tokyo: Hyōgen Kiseishi Shuppankai, 2019).

16

James Welker

33.  Hyojin Kim, “Boys Love Is a Battlefield: Recent Conflicts within the South Korean Otaku/Fujoshi Community,” paper presented at “Queer Transfigurations: International Symposium on Boys Love Media in Asia,” Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan, July 1–2, 2017. 34.  For an overview of Japanese debates over BL, see Ishida, “‘Hottoite kudasai.’” 35. Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron. 36. On the history of this slogan, see Frances Rogan and Shelley Budgeon, “The Personal Is Political: Assessing Feminist Fundamentals in the Digital Age,” Social Sciences 7, no. 8 (2018).

part i

East Asia

chapter 2

Between BL and Slash Danmei Fiction, Transcultural Mediation, and Changing Gender Norms in Contemporary China Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

Danmei is a Chinese umbrella term for original and derivative male– male romance created by and for women and sexual minorities.1 Since the first locally produced danmei story was posted on the Internet around 1998, danmei has evolved into a prominent genre of web literature,2 a key component of Internet-based youth culture and fan culture,3 and a significant economic and cultural force in China.4 The recent popularity of original Chinese danmei novels and their transmedia adaptations in Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam suggests that danmei might well be one of the few created-in-China cultural products that have gained a foothold in overseas markets and potentially enhanced China’s soft power despite continuous censorship at home.5 Coinciding with danmei’s rise to national and regional prominence, a couple of researchers have positioned it side by side with its Japanese and/or Western counterparts. For instance, using an older term for boys love (BL), Alan Williams invents the compound “yaoi/danmei” to “maintain an historical throughline between the 1970s and 80s Japanese dōjinshi predecessors and the post-1990s glocal media.”6 Yet he seems to view danmei simply as a Chinese iteration of yaoi (BL) and an unwitting accomplice in Japan’s brand nationalism. In her dissertation on Chinese fan culture, Xiqing Zheng coins the term “global homoromance” to refer to “all female created, female consumed male–male love stories, including but not limited to slash fiction, yaoi/BL/shōnen’ai and danmei.” While admitting that those three genres are not exact equivalents of one another, she nevertheless claims that “yaoi and danmei are more or less identical, both differing slightly with slash.”7 19

20

Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

In this chapter we attempt to join the recent academic discussion on the relationship between Chinese danmei, Japanese BL, and Western slash fiction. Instead of hastily dumping all three genres into one basket or subsuming danmei under the other two categories, we try to sort out danmei’s complex engagement and negotiation with as well as transformation of the generic features of Japanese BL and Western slash. We argue that the danmei genre itself has functioned as a productive contact zone in which BL and slash interact, as Chinese fans have appropriated useful elements from both genres, deliberated their discrepancies, and creatively mixed them to suit the needs of local readers. By investigating danmei’s interaction with BL and slash, we are able to shed light on both the evolution of danmei and the changing gender norms for women in contemporary China.8 As we have outlined Chinese readers’ initial contact with Japanese BL elsewhere,9 here due to space constraints we will chiefly examine the dissemination of slash in China and its impact on original danmei fiction, the backbone of Chinese danmei culture.

The Three Slash Moments The introduction of slash to China can be traced back to the official release of the first volume of the Harry Potter series in 2000 and the ensuing “Pottermania” that has seized millions of Chinese youth.10 In addition to multiple fake Harry Potter novels in the Chinese market,11 the series has also stimulated the translation and creation of numerous works of fan fiction, or “fanfics,” and the establishment of a string of online fan forums. While many Harry Potter fanfics in China fall into the categories of “gen” (from “general audiences,” thus containing little or no sexual content) and “het” (from heterosexual), there have also been a considerable number of slash fanfics posted on literature websites like Jinjiang Literature City (jjwxc.net, 2003–), myfreshnet.com (2000–2014), and Harry Potter–specific slash forums like Thorny Road of Silver Green (silvergreen.org, 2003–2016) and Cat’s Paw (luvharry .net, 2004–). The former Potter forum is dedicated to Severus Snape and members of Slytherin; the latter is currently the most popular Chinese Harry Potter forum and only allows fanfics that focus on relationships in which Harry is the uke (“shou” in Chinese, namely, the “bottom,” while another character in the series is the seme (“gong,” the “top”).12 As a genre of fanfic, slash is intimately tied to a particular fandom and requires readers to master a whole body of fan knowledge in



Between BL and Slash21

advance in order to fully enjoy the fan works. Hence, the readership of slash is often considerably smaller than original danmei/BL works. Yet around 2004, two translated slash stories, A Fish Called Krycek (Yitiao mingjiao Krycek de yu, 1997) and 24/7 (1999), managed to circumvent the constraints of fanfic and circulate widely among Chinese danmei readers. Both are AU (alternative universe) stories based on The X Files (1993–2002, 2016–2018), a highly acclaimed American science fiction television series that has not been aired much on Chinese television screens, and could almost be read as original works without any prior knowledge of the television show. While A Fish Called Krycek depicts the trans-species romance between Mulder, a marine biologist, and Krycek, a wounded merman that Mulder saves, 24/7 is a master/slave novel filled with BDSM eroticism and psychological complexity. Because of their innovative generic settings and well-written sex scenes, the two fanfics continue to attract new danmei readers today. The novel 24/7 is particularly praised for “opening the door to a new world,” a phrase frequently invoked by danmei fans as the most important benefit of engaging with the genre. On a review site for danmei works, one reader observes that compared with Japanese BDSM stories that mainly focus on how the dom (dominant partner) humiliates his sub (submissive partner) in order to establish his dominant position, 24/7 demonstrates that genuine dom/sub relationships should be built on mutual trust and acceptance. Other readers also comment that this story clearly explains the logic, rules, and love in BDSM and helps to reduce misunderstanding of sadomasochism.13 The popularity of the novel eventually led to an online meeting between its British author, Xanthe, and her Chinese readers at a QQ chatroom in March 2005. The meeting was simultaneously posted on Xianqing, the most renowned danmei forum in the Chinese-speaking world.14 Despite its increasing accessibility, slash fanfic continued to circulate within a relatively small circle (quan) of dedicated fans.15 It was not until 2010, when Chinese danmei fans fell en masse under the spell of BBC’s miniseries Sherlock (2010–2017), that the Euro-American slash circle began to play a heightened role in the Chinese danmei scene. Thousands of fans of original danmei novels, Japanese manga and anime, and Korean pop idols—all of whom generally used to have little interest in fan productions based on Euro-American media content—started to embrace slash because of Sherlock. Apart from the show’s creative plots, spectacular visual effects, and dynamic acting, danmei fans have been particularly

22

Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

attracted by the intense homosocial relationship between Sherlock and his companion, John Watson. In an online post, one Sherlock fan claims that she has never witnessed such a strong and lasting bond between two people in any other television or film production or real life. What Sherlock and John share is a bliss that originates from the “pure communication between two souls” and far exceeds the pleasure that ordinary people gain from sex.16 Danmei fans’ enthusiasm about the BBC series is also linked to the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Holmes stories have long enjoyed an exceptional status in the reception history of Western literature and culture in modern China. The first Chinese translation of Sherlock Holmes dates back to 1896, a mere nine years after the first Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” was published in the United Kingdom.17 By 2016, there were 580 different editions of Sherlock Holmes stories in the Chinese book market. No other domestic or foreign work, not even Chinese classics like Tang Poems or The Analects of Confucius, could boast so great a number of editions.18 The Chinese public’s familiarity with the original Holmes stories has greatly facilitated the domestic creation of Sherlock slash fanfics. Not surprisingly, several Sherlock/John (“Johnlock”) stories penned by Chinese writers have achieved canonical status not only in the Sherlock fandom, but also in the Euro-American circle as a whole, where translated English fanfics are usually deemed to have higher literary value than domestic fanfics.

Debate and Transformation The rapid expansion of the Euro-American circle and the translation of a large quantity of slash fanfics into Chinese have made many Chinese danmei fans aware of the differences between slash and BL/danmei. One of the most salient differences is, of course, the ubiquity of the seme/uke trope in BL/danmei and the relative absence of this trope in Western slash. From 2014 to 2015, about three hundred slash fans participated in a spirited debate concerning the rationale of the trope on Suiyuanju (mtslash.me, 2005–), the largest online forum of the Euro-American circle.19 The discussion was prompted by a question posed by a gay male fan, who was curious why some fans are attached to a particular seme/ uke order when pairing up two male characters and refuse to accept any switching of the roles. Like some Western slash fans who regard the seme/uke trope as “the worst feature” of yaoi/BL,20 a number of Chinese



Between BL and Slash23

slash fans also denounced it as an outdated and backward legacy inherited from Japanese BL. They claimed that the trope projects male– female gender stereotypes onto same-sex narratives and does not reflect the sexual fluidity experienced by real gay men. The judgmental attitude and moral superiority assumed by those critics, however, provoked supporters of the trope to adamantly defend their preferences for fixed seme/uke pairings in fanfics. Some supporters noted that many Chinese gay men do have a strong preference for a particular sexual position. Others pointed out that the seme/uke roles do not merely refer to sex positions, but to the physical appearance of the couple and the balance of power within the relationship. The most noteworthy theory was proposed by a fan using the handle mortalcat, who, based on reflection on her own coupling preferences, argued that the seme/uke coupling is about balancing the power in a relationship because “sex is about power.” When pairing up two characters that differ in age, social status, and personality, the seme/uke role is an important counterweight to keep the relationship in balance. Suppose character A has all the advantages of age, social status, and personality over character B, then fan girls would like to designate A as the uke, and B as the seme, so as not to tilt power too much toward A.21 This line of interpretation of the trope seems to be an astute elaboration of Japanese scholar Watanabe Yumiko’s observation that the seme or uke role of a character “is measured according to three different scales: society, corporeality, and spirituality. These three factors combine to create a rich system of personal relationships based on subtle power balances.”22 In other words, rather than an ideologically incorrect reproduction of heteronormativity, the seme/uke trope could actually serve as a tool to symbolically resolve the inherent power imbalance in a hierarchical society and to achieve equality through difference.23 As of 2021, Chinese slash circles have held onto the seme/uke dynamics in their fan writings despite their close affinity with Western slash fanfic. The common danmei saying that “if you love him, let him be an uke” still rings true to many slash fans, probably because they can either “empathize with the suffering uke as a uniquely Chinese way of processing the psychology of abuse,” as Katrien Jacobs writes,24 or identify with the seme to possess and ravish the uke. Some well-known slash forums, like Cat’s Paw mentioned above, have maintained strict regulations about the sex roles of main characters. Even on more lenient forums like Suiyuanju, fanfic writers and translators are required to use

24

Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

appropriate tags to clearly indicate characters’ sex roles in the stories. In the original danmei circle, the seme/uke dynamic also remains the basic principle of danmei. Although the slash boom in China has not done away with the seme/ uke trope in danmei, it has brought substantial changes to the way this trope is deployed in original danmei fiction. During the first half of the 2000s, many original danmei writers took the works of Konohara Narise, Yamaai Shikiko, and other Japanese BL writers as their models. Konohara’s novels typically pair up a masculine, straight-appearing seme with a slim, beautiful, and sensitive uke. Such kind of feminized uke is even more conspicuous in Yamaai’s works, which often feature an uke whose feminine charm rivals that of a beautiful woman. Due to this imitation of Japanese BL fiction, early original danmei stories are dominated by a combination of a strong seme and a weak uke and a correlative use of rape as a major plot device. Precisely because the manly seme has more physical strength than the effeminate uke, the former could take the latter by force.25 Besides the prevalence of rape narratives, sex scenes in those early stories are often imbued with a poignant sense of sin and shame, partly to highlight the societal taboo on homosexuality, and partly to mirror women writers and readers’ sense of guilt about expressing sexual feelings through the consumption of pornographic materials. In contrast with Japanese BL writers’ preference for the “flat-chested uke,” that is, a young uke character that looks and behaves like a woman except for his flat chest, slash writers in the Anglosphere and China favor the romantic relationship between two equally strong adult men. In Iron Man slash fanfics published on Jinjiang, as John Wei has remarked, “adulthood has often taken the place of juvenile charm, and the superhero duo potentially enjoys a more mature relationship.”26 Since the two members of the slash couple have the same athletic physique, neither can coerce the other into sex. As a result, their sexual relationship tends to be based on mutual desires and consent, and is accompanied by more open communication. Influenced by the mature relationship pattern in slash writings, strong seme with strong uke has gradually become the mainstream coupling pattern in original danmei works. This pattern is particularly common in works that are placed in a Western setting. Thanks to this new pairing trend, the frequency of nonconsensual sex scenes in danmei works has decreased. In contrast, bold scenes of lovemaking, depicting



Between BL and Slash25

two protagonists in mutually enjoyable sexual intercourse, have become a key to success. Yet, such sexual explicitness has all but disappeared from mainstream commercial websites since the 2014 antipornography campaign.27 Other than contributing to the major shift in coupling pattern, slash has also brought several new tropes to original danmei writings, most notably Alpha/Beta/Omega (A/B/O) dynamics. In the A/B/O universe, or “Omegaverse,” all humans are classified into male and female, as well as Alpha, Beta, and Omega. Alphas are large, dominant, and able to impregnate Omegas. Betas are normal, everyday humans, and may or may not be able to mate with Omegas. Omegas are smaller and less aggressive, and can be impregnated. They regularly go into a heat cycle that lasts from three days to a week, during which time they have little control of themselves and crave sex with Alphas. Occupying the bottom of the social hierarchy, Omegas are usually treated as secondclass citizens and banned from the public sphere.28 Originating sometime between the summers of 2010 and 2011 from the fandom of the American television series Supernatural (2005–2020),29 the trope first caught the attention of Chinese slash fans on Suiyuanju around October 2011, when a Chinese translation of an A/B/O Sherlock fanfic was posted there.30 It soon spread from the slash circle into various other danmei circles and began appearing in popular original danmei novels. Original A/B/O danmei fiction generally centers on two major themes: the hormone-driven attraction and tension between Alphas and Omegas, and Omegas’ fight against their biological destiny. Many original stories are set in the future with a military background; as a result the physical differences between Alphas and Omegas are thrown into sharp relief. Take one of the most famous Chinese A/B/O stories, Military Academy Cadets (Junxiaosheng, 2013–2014), for example.31 The nearly 800,000-word original novel tells the life of Lin Yuan, a brilliant young cadet at the top military academy in the empire. Having passed the entrance exams with full marks as a Beta, he becomes the roommate of a young prince, an Alpha named Xize. Lin Yuan soon captures the heart of the prince with his outstanding physical strength and mental prowess. Later the prince finds out that Lin Yuan is actually an Omega who has been instructed to use hormone suppressants since childhood so that he could live a free life. This was necessary because according to the law of the empire, all Omegas must be sent to a special protection center and assigned an Alpha mate at the age of eighteen. They would

26

Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang

then be confined to the domestic sphere to fulfill their reproductive duties. One of Lin Yuan’s fathers, Ling Yu, is also an Omega, who, disguised as a Beta, becomes the top general of the empire. Yet when his true identity is exposed, he loses everything and is forced to live on the run. The father and the son together help the prince clamp down on an insurgency led by the head of the military, after which the royal family implements new equal rights legislation enabling Omegas to participate in public affairs and hold office. At first sight, the situation of Omegas is “dangerously close to” ­women’s experience under the patriarchy, making the Omegaverse “blatantly heteronormative” and contradictory of the egalitarian gaytopia envisioned in many slash stories.32 The rigid and hierarchical sex/gender roles and high possibility of nonconsensual sex also harken back to the strong seme and weak uke coupling pattern in early danmei stories. A closer look at Military Academy Cadets, however, reveals that the novel has actually followed the ideal of radical equality upheld by the strong seme and strong uke pattern in characterization and plot. Just as Ling Yu’s military talent matches or even surpasses his Alpha partner, Lin Yuan also has greater mental prowess than his Alpha, Xize. When Ling Yu accidentally goes into heat and his Alpha bonds with him without his consent, Ling Yu punishes his mate by remaining incommunicado for nineteen years. In fact, the whole point of the novel is to illustrate how to create an equal society in the face of irreducible sex/gender differences; the solutions offered by the novel include legal reform, attitude change among members of the ruling class, and organized resistance by members of the subordinate class.

In his analysis of the genealogy of BL in Japan, James Welker points out that “BL manga has from the beginning been composed of a shifting mix of elements from high and low culture from Japan, Europe, America, and, increasingly, elsewhere.”33 Similarly, the evolution of Chinese danmei has also been shaped by cultural influences from different geographical locales, particularly Japanese BL manga and prose fiction in their formative years and Euro-American slash fanfics in recent years. BL and slash are generally assumed to have developed independently of each other in the 1970s, and thus far there has been very little comparative research of the two genres. The fact that both genres have converged in danmei and impacted the production of original danmei



Between BL and Slash27

fiction not only testifies to danmei’s extraordinary hybridity and inclusiveness but also sheds light on how media and cultural content flows from the cores to the peripheries, how those transnational flows are mediated by local actors, and how a “world system” of women-oriented male homoerotic narratives seems to be emerging, to borrow loosely from Immanuel Wallerstein’s terminology.34 By charting out danmei’s engagement with slash fan culture and analyzing the slash tropes and features that have been incorporated into original danmei fiction since the beginning of the new millennium, we can observe two notable trends in the development of danmei. First, danmei writers have become more straightforward in articulating their ideals of gender equality and love between equals. While the male–male relationship imagined in danmei has always been more egalitarian than the heterosexual relationship portrayed in traditional romance, seme/ uke dynamics used to involve significant power imbalance. In early danmei stories, the uke is usually represented as inferior to the seme in age, social status, and physical strength, and it is often the seme who has the upper hand in the relationship, at least in the beginning of the narrative. In the past decade, however, more and more danmei stories have taken pains to put the seme and uke on equal footing and to present their relationship as a partnership based on mutual trust and respect. As a result, the aforementioned figure of the flat-chested uke has almost vanished from mainstream danmei works. If the uke is essentially coded as the feminine, and the seme, the masculine,35 then the shifting coupling pattern indicates that recent danmei writers are more eager to distribute power to the side of the feminine and more supportive of women’s aspiration to be men’s equal in work, relationships, and other aspects of life. Another interesting trend is that the message of sexual expression in danmei is becoming more complex and ambivalent. As a form of pornography for women, sensual and unconventional sex scenes have been a crucial part of the appeal of the genre. Yet as Military Academy Cadets has demonstrated, sexual pleasure itself could be an obstacle, rather than a catalyst, to freedom. While the novel dwells at length on the passionate mating scenes between Alphas and Omegas, a form of “eye candy” for readers, it also casts doubt on the emancipatory potential of women’s erotic pleasure, as the Omegas’ subordinate role in society is specifically grounded in their biological instincts. Consequently, strong-willed Omegas like Ling Yu are determined to give up sexual intimacy in their quest for personal freedom and equal

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rights. In reality, many ambitious professional Chinese women have also chosen to forgo intimate relationships, staying single, marrying late, or rejecting motherhood, in order to control their own lives in China’s deeply misogynist society. Since danmei’s immense popularity in China largely derives from its unique capacity to give voice to the innermost desires and needs of women, the two trends in danmei writing might give us a hint of the changing attitudes toward gender equality and sexuality of a new generation of young, educated, urban Chinese women.

Notes  1.  Such fan works are often labelled danmei “tongren,” from the Japanese term for fan works, dōjinshi. 2.  On the relationship between danmei fiction and Chinese web literature, see Jin Feng, Romancing the Internet: Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance (Boston: Brill, 2013), esp. chap. 2. 3. See, for example, Ling Yang, “Platforms, Practices, and Politics: A Snapshot of Networked Fan Communities in China,” in The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, ed. Gerard Goggin and Mark McLelland (New York: Routledge, 2017); Xiqing Zheng, “Borderless Fandom and Contemporary Popular Cultural Scene in Chinese Cyberspace” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2016), esp. chaps. 4 and 5; Shuyan Zhou, “From Online BL Fandom to the CCTV Spring Festival Gala: The Transforming Power of Online Carnival,” in Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017). 4.  Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “Danmei and Cultural Globalization from Below,” in Lavin, Yang, and Zhao, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols. 5. Jing Jamie Zhao, Ling Yang, and Maud Lavin, “Introduction,” in Lavin, Yang, and Zhao, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols, xix. 6.  Alan Williams, “Rethinking Yaoi on the Regional and Global Scale,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 37 (2015), http:// intersections.anu.edu.au/issue37/williams.htm. 7.  Zheng, “Borderless Fandom,” 161, 162, 169. 8. For danmei’s impact on the public perception of heteromasculinity, see Wei Wei’s chapter in this volume.



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9. Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang, “Forbidden Love: Incest, Generational Conflict, and the Erotics of Power in Chinese BL Fiction,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 4, no. 1 (2013): 30–32. 10.  John Nguyet Erni, “Enchanted: Harry Potter and Magical Capitalism in Urban China,” Chinese Journal of Communication 1, no. 2 (2008). 11. See chap. 4 in Lena Henningsen, Copyright Matters: Imitation, Creativity and Authenticity in Contemporary Chinese Literature (Cambridge: Intersentia, 2010). 12.  Putao Jiao, “Guoneiwai hali bote tongren luntan jianjie,” last modified March 19, 2014, https://tieba.baidu.com/p/2901668087. 13.  Saowen Xiaoyuan, “Dui 24/7 de quanbu pinglun,” http://saowen .net/readstatuses/novelReviews/441. 14.  Jinjiang, “Xanthe jianmianhui zhibotie,” last modified May 5, 2013, http://bbs.jjwxc.net/showmsg.php?board=3&keyword=Xanthe&id=64623. 15. Chinese danmei is made up of a wide range of fan circles or communities. For a detailed discussion of those circles, see Yang and Xu, “Danmei and Cultural Globalization from Below,” 8–11. 16.  Goodmango, “Tan zhentan he junyi weihe dadongwo,” last modified October 7, 2014, http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3049384157. On Sherlock’s massive appeal in China, see also Wei Wei’s chapter in this volume. 17.  Eva Hung, “Sherlock Holmes in Early Twentieth Century China (1896–1916)—Popular Fiction as an Educational Tool,” in Translators’ Strategies and Creativity, ed. Ann Beylard-Ozeroff, Jana Králová, and Barbara Moser-Mercer (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1998), 74. 18.  Yufen Yang, “Cong CIP shuju kan jinjinian tushu chongfu chuban xianxiang,” last modified October 13, 2016, http://www.cptoday.cn/news /detail/1995. 19.  yuezhifeng, “Weihe huiyou CP bukeni de xinli?” http://www.mtslash .org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=119166&highlight=CP%B2%BB %BF%C9%C4%E6. 20. Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Subverting Masculinity, Misogyny, and Reproductive Technology in Sex Pistols,” Image & Narrative 12, no. 1 (2011): 5. 21. mortalcat, last modified June 19, 2015, http://www.mtslash.net /forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=119166&extra=&highlight=%CE%A A%BA%CE%BB%E1%D3%D0CP%B2%BB%BF%C9%C4%E6%B5%C4 %D0%C4%C0%ED&page=18. 22.  Quoted in Fujimoto Yukari, “The Evolution of BL as ‘Playing with Gender’: Viewing the Genesis and Development of BL from a Contemporary

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Perspective,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 85. 23.  Filipino fans also take a positive view of the seme/uke convention. See Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin’s chapter in this volume. 24. Katrien Jacobs, The Afterglow of Women’s Pornography in Post-Digital China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 134. 25.  For more discussion of the rape plot in danmei fiction, see Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang, “Zhongguo danmei (BL) xiaoshuo zhong de qingyu shuxie yu xing/bie zhengzhi,” Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan, no. 100 (2015): 91–121. 26.  John Wei, “Queer Encounters between Iron Man and Chinese Boys’ Love Fandom,” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 17 (2014), http:// dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0561. 27. For more information about the campaign, see Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’: The Fate of Chinese Danmei Communities in the 2014 Anti-Porn Campaign,” in The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Mark McLelland (London: Routledge, 2016). Due to the tightening of censorship of online literature as a whole and the increase in adolescent and less-educated BL readers, the pattern of coupling strong seme characters and weak uke characters made a salient comeback around 2019. 28. norabombay, “Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer,” last ­ modified September 21, 2015, http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters /665489?view_adult=true. 29.  netweight, “The Nonnies Made Them Do It!” last modified October 28, 2013, http://archiveofourown.org/works/1022303/chapters/2033841. 30.  Zheng, “Borderless Fandom,” 195. 31. Diezhiling, Junxiaosheng, first published November 11, 2013, completed December 12, 2014, http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid =1954760. 32.  Zheng, “Borderless Fandom,” 201, 202. 33.  James Welker, “A Brief History of Shonen’ai, Yaoi, and Boys Love,” in McLelland et al., Boys Love Manga and Beyond, 42. 34. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 35.  Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 84.

chapter 3

Breaking the Structural Silence The Sociological Function of Danmei Novels in Contemporary China Xi Lin

The past twenty years have witnessed the emergence and development of a broad sphere of boys love (BL) fiction creation and consumption in mainland Chinese cyberspace, where the genre is referred to as danmei. As detailed by Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang in their chapter in this volume, the exponential rise in the number of Internet users in China has contributed to the import of Japanese BL products and the emergence of a Chinese fandom. In recent years, with a growing danmei fiction fan base, a danmei entertainment industry is also clearly in the making in China. For instance, popular danmei novels are quite commonly made into dramas, not aired on traditional broadcast television stations but, instead, streamed on online video platforms. In 2016, for instance, Addicted (Shangyin), based on popular danmei author Chai Jidan’s novel Are You Addicted? (Ni ya shangyin le?), streamed on the Tencent and YouKu platforms and was reported to have had over a hundred million views.1 Nevertheless, this drama was quickly banned by the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), the media censorship and regulatory agency in China. A year later, China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA), a newly established association subordinate to SARFT, passed a regulation titled “General Rules of Reviewing the Content of Netcasting Audio-Visual Programs” (Wangluo shiting jiemu neirong shenhe tongze), adopted on and effective as of June 30, 2017.2 These “General Rules” stipulate that the content in any online program should be deleted or revised should it contain a “presentation or representation of abnormal sexual relationships or conduct, such as incest, homosexuality, sexual

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perversion, sexual predation, sexual abuse, or sexual violence.”3 Here homosexuality is included within the broad category of “abnormal sexual relationships or conduct” (buzhengchang de xingguanxi huo xingxingwei) with a clearly disparaging tone in a rule that seeks to suppress any discussion thereof. This chapter will discuss the role played by danmei novels in breaking this homophobic “silencing” and opening up a discursive space in which to discuss LGBTQ issues in China.

Structural Silence In China, homophobia does not manifest itself through explicit violence against the LGBTQ community, broadly defined, but rather it operates in a reticent manner through the suppression of public discussion on or media representation of LGBTQ issues, as in the case of the “General Rules” of the CNSA.4 This form of homophobia produces a social space in which the LGBTQ community is rendered invisible and voiceless. Whenever LGBTQ issues come up within official media, the discourse is invariably a condemnation of their sexually “deviant” practices and norms. For instance, on December 1, World AIDS Day, news coverage in official government mouthpieces, such as Xinhua and CCTV, will invariably report on the rapid increase of HIV/AIDS infections among youths, especially male college students, in mainland China.5 Experts from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (referred to as the CDC) will be invited to comment on the coming of an HIV/ AIDS epidemic, arguing that these young men have been corrupted by the “harmful social climate” (buliang shehui fengqi).6 The abovementioned media demonization of the LGBTQ community, especially gay men, points toward a discursive space in which the misrepresentation of the LGBTQ community becomes the dominant discourse, crowding out all other possible discussions around this issue, including same-sex marriage, affirmative action for LGBTQ people, and antidiscrimination legislation. An undesirable result of this heteronormative, homo-­ disparaging discourse is a structural silencing of the LGBTQ community within the public consciousness, whereby the community is reduced to a pitiful, shadowy existence. This term “structural silencing” is adapted here from Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard’s concept of “structural amnesia,” based on his study of Nuer society, a society wherein the public memory of ancestors and historical events is gendered to the extent that only men are remembered,



Breaking the Structural Silence33

with women completely erased from public memory.7 Remembering by the community, so to speak, is tied to its forgetting, a point that is easily overlooked. It is also closely tied with the expression of power through the kinship system. In applying this concept to the LGBTQ community, we can see that in contemporary China, there is a clear effect of silencing that is largely structured through social preferences, pressures, and choices. When the image of a public health peril reigns in the public mind, it renders the public forgetful of one basic fact about members of the LGBTQ community—namely, that they are human beings just like everyone else, whose rights demand recognition. Constructed as the enemy of public health, members of the LGBTQ community and the community as a whole in China have had their voices suppressed and have been essentially rendered defenseless in this intertextual web of meaning making. With the passage of time, this association of HIV/AIDS with the LGBTQ community has become entrenched in the public consciousness and accepted as an uncontested truth.

Breaking the Silence It is against this general background that we can come to grasp the sociopolitical significance of danmei novels in China: this genre can draw the attention of the public to LGBTQ issues through a very different lens. For instance, one online discussion among fans and members of the LGBTQ community was on whether the depiction of the gay community in danmei novels and dramas is distorted. In Addicted, mentioned in the opening of this chapter, for example, both protagonists are self-identified straight men, long a common trope in danmei and BL more broadly. Even in the novel itself, both are depicted as having been straight men before they met each other. There are also implicit gay-bashing remarks in the novel. For instance, just before they decide to be together, Bai Luoyin, one of the two protagonists, is hesitant. He has many doubts about the possibility of making a future with someone of the same sex. On their way home one day, he asks Gu Hai, his potential partner, “Would it be possible for us to go back to the normal, proper way (zhengdao)?” When Gu Hai replies that he does not understand the question, Bai follows up by saying, “I feel that we are walking on a crooked path (lu zouwai le). Can I pull you back to the proper way?” Here the proper–crooked (zheng–wai) dichotomy is used

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as a metaphor for the hetero–homosexual binary, with a derogatory connotation clearly implied about the latter by the term “crooked.” The novel thereby confirms rather than challenges the established homophobic beliefs in society at large. This clearly echoes existing research exploring how BL narratives can be homophobic in their depiction of self-identified heterosexual men who, by chance, fall in love and have sex with another person who happens to be a man.8 In China, what has been criticized is the consumption of gay men’s bodies, as well as their typically unrealistic power and money in these danmei works.9 In spite of such homophobia and what, in reference to Japanese BL, Ishida Hitoshi has called the “represenational appropriation” of gay men,10 I would argue that these danmei narratives and the popularity of dramas adopted from danmei novels do carry an important social function here—namely, raising public awareness about the LGBTQ community, even if such novels do so by drawing attention to “gay” men specifically. For mainstream society, apart from the meager amount of information one can access in the official media, encounters with positive representations of the LGBTQ community are rare. These danmei narratives and dramas at least provide a means to access imaginary depictions of male homosexuality. Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge, writing in this volume, for instance, discusses how the popularity of BL has helped increase tolerance for the LGBTQ community in Thai society at large, in spite of its shortcomings and even in spite of resistance against the genre from the actual gay community. In the case of China, I would argue that a similar positive effect can be seen, especially upon the government’s ban of Addicted and the ban-spurred debate on the issue. Both the drama and its banning quickly increased the visibility of gay men—and, by extension, the LGBTQ community more broadly— and for the first time, it became clear that homosexuality does not need to be discussed with reference to HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that such imaginary characters and works, though capable of raising public awareness, still generally fall short of offering a depiction of gay men that approximates reality. Some danmei narratives, however, are arguably closer in proximity to reality than Addicted. A distinct genre of danmei that has emerged in China called hugong­ wen, which entails “a pair of gongs,” offers such narratives. The word gong is the Chinese pronunciation of the Japanese BL term seme, meaning the “attacker” or the “top,” that is, the one who penetrates and dominates in a male–male sexual relationship in danmei. In other words,



Breaking the Structural Silence35

hugongwen depicts a relationship between two “tops.” This genre rocks the boat of typical danmei, in which one of the two men in a relationship is depicted in an effeminate light—as a shou (or uke in Japanese; the “receiver”/“bottom”). Arguably, the gong–shou binary still predominates in danmei fiction, wherein the male–female binary code of sexual conduct in a heterosexual relationship is replicated as a male–male one. In particular, the gong is the dominant party who approximates the role of a heterosexual man. Although there are many exceptions, most commonly it is the gong who is expected to penetrate, dominate, and dictate the course of the relationship. By way of comparison, the shou takes up the role of a heterosexual woman who passively awaits the penetration from his sexual partner, and who seeks to please and appease his gong. This gong–shou dichotomy is widely used by danmei writers in China, as is the seme–uke dichotomy among BL writers in general.11 Hugongwen challenges this “(strong) gong–(weak) shou” binary because both parties in the relationship are physically strong, socially powerful, and overtly masculine. As a result, both parties are placed more on a par with one another than in the predominant gong–shou dichotomy, which is, by definition, asymmetrical. Arguably, this more egalitarian relationship, compared with its heterosexuality-modelled counterpart, comes closer to an actual homosexual relationship in real life to the extent that the relationship is a pairing of ostensible equals. This representation of homosexuality carries with it two aspects of sociopolitical significance. On the one hand, the genre constructs an alternative masculinity as a form of resistance to the dominant, heteronormative, and hegemonic notion of masculinity.12 On the other, the genre generates sympathy among readers by raising the awareness of the difficulties and pressures facing the LGBTQ community. Both points will be illustrated with Qilin, a popular danmei novel by someone writing under the penname Juzishu. This work was first published online in China from 2006 to 2011 and released in print form in Taiwan upon its conclusion online.13 The novel is about Lu Zhen, an idealistic gay soldier, and his team leader, Xia Minglang, who used to be straight. The first two volumes focus on how they fall in love with each other. Lu, who at first detested Xia, gradually falls for the latter, while Xia, who has lived as a straight man throughout his life, is struggling with his newfound desire for a male colleague. This novel stands out in its depiction of a relationship in which neither party is weak, passive, or submissive. On the contrary, both men are strong and assertive.

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The novel describes in detail how they stumble forward to explore an egalitarian and yet more nuanced relationship than a heterosexual one. The first sociopolitical work the novel does lies in the construction of a masculinity alternative to the traditional “hegemonic” one. R. W. Connell remarks that any given society has a “hegemonic masculinity,” namely “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women.”14 This configuration of gender practice is more than a mere cultural ideal; on the contrary, it does not arrive at its hegemonic position until it has joined hands with politics and institutions. As an institutionalized form of power structure and relations, it thus consolidates its leading position within the society as the guiding force. As Connell further explains, it is “a structure that includes large-scale institutions and economic relations as well as faceto-face relationships and sexuality. Masculinity is institutionalized in this structure, as well as being an aspect of individual character and personality.”15 To enable this institutionalization to work, it will deploy a series of strategies, for instance, the domination of heterosexual men over other social groups. There is not only a gender imbalance between men and women in general, but also an asymmetry among men as well whereby homosexual men are discriminated against and relegated to secondary, subordinate, and marginal positions. In other words, femininity and gayness are loosely equated, and symbolically despised, rejected by, and subjugated to the hegemonic heterosexual norm.16 In Qilin, between Lu and Xia there is no such domination of one party over the other. Both parties are masculine—albeit in different ways and with varying attributes, calling to mind Fujimoto Yukari’s discussion of the “playing with gender” that typical seme–uke coupling sometimes facilitates among BL fans in the context of Japan.17 It is not just that they can penetrate each other in a sexual-physical sense (as is suggested by the name of this genre, hugongwen), but also that they are more on equal terms. This removal of subordination ushers in as much an egalitarianism as a welcoming of other qualities traditionally considered as nonmasculine or feminine, such as emotional sensitivity, a direct display of affective gestures, and sentimental catharsis. For instance, traditionally within the army, training takes a harsh disciplinary form, subordinating soldiers to their commander(s) with an emphasis on unconditional obedience. Xia carries with him elements of such



Breaking the Structural Silence37

an old-style, traditional, and patriarchal military order, manifest in his harsh way of training newly recruited soldiers. By way of comparison, Lu, as an idealistic gay character, more sensitive, and more emotional, brings to the military base some fresh changes. This plays out in volume 3, “A Joyful Life” (Kuaiyi rensheng). When Lu is assigned to recruit and train a band of soldiers, he adopts a softer, more humane touch with them in contrast with Xia and other commanders. Instead of resorting to the traditional harsh style of training, he opts to “hold the hands of a recruit tightly when he burns out and look at him until he regains his strength.” He “asks in an encouraging manner, ‘Can you do it again?’” He “attentively looks into [the recruit’s] eyes and says, ‘I have faith in you.’”18 This brings about a conflict between Lu and Xia, as the latter firmly believes in the value of harsh training to get soldiers used to the life-and-death conditions of the battlefield. And yet, Lu’s seemingly effeminate—thus, seemingly weak—approach to training makes his soldiers feel “cared for and taken care of.” Those qualities typically derided and deemed “sissy,” such as being caring, emotional, and sensitive, are here reincorporated into the construction of a masculinity that is not necessarily premised on the debasing of the other gender or other social groups. In the same vein, this alternative masculinity seeks not to collude with power, meaning it carries with it a de-institutionalizing force. Arguably, this is a more humane version of masculinity, as men who express it seek not to dance within power politics in society but to communicate with the hearts of the people around them. The second sociopolitical function of this novel can be seen in its detailing of the difficulties and pressures facing members of the gay community from their families, colleagues, and friends, both on the individual level and in society at large. While the gong–shou binary in most danmei novels has been criticized as a consolidation of existing social inequality and as the “plundering” of gay images,19 in Qilin, Juzishu chooses to be franker with the dilemmas facing members of the LGBTQ community, instead of deliberately evading them. Although in Are You Addicted? the author, Chai Jidan, writes about objections to the central same-sex relationship coming from family members, including Gu Hai’s father, Gu Weiting, these objections are largely reduced to the personal idiosyncrasies of each fictional character. For instance, Gu Weiting is a military commander who is an overbearing, domineering patriarch in his family. Upon hearing of his son’s relationship with his

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son’s stepbrother, his first reaction is to lock up and punish Gu Hai. This may to a certain extent—albeit in an exaggerated manner—represent the typical response a Chinese parent might have upon hearing their child’s disclosure of their sexual orientation. Nevertheless, it still largely ignores the wider social context vis-à-vis general attitudes about homosexuality, as well as the social structure in which individuals are embedded as members of Chinese society expected to serve certain roles in the family, including getting married and having children. By way of comparison, in Qilin Juzishu portrays in a nuanced way Xia’s interior struggles when he discovers his affection for Lu, struggles in which social pressure plays no small part. For instance, in one passage, Xia is lost in his own thoughts: Lu Zhen, that son of gun, actually hasn’t fully grown up yet. [He is] a handsome young man, who is always optimistic, always sincere, firm, and resolute, full of passion, and he never gives up his dreams or hope. He still has a future that is broad and extensive, and Qilin [the military base] is no more than the place from where he is taking off [in his life]. Xia only wants to add some weight on his back to make him stronger and more powerful. Why would Xia break his wings? . . . He is like a stalk of bamboo: tall and straight, neat and pleasant, and always full of passion and vitality. This is what Xia treasures most [about Lu] and would even give up life to keep Lu just as he is. Xia wants to watch Lu grow up, sweeping away with a vibrant force all that is old and outdated standing in Lu’s way, and using that fresh vitality to color the entire army through and through. . . . No matter what, a man as fresh and transparent as Lu deserves a perfect, happy life, or at least, a life that is smooth and unhindered.20 She continues by suggesting that even if Lu is not concerned by gossip about his homosexuality and the negative impact on his career— “breaking his wings”—Xia does care and would feel guilty if continuing the relationship caused Lu harm. In this paragraph, Juzishu uses metaphors to denote the difficulties and social pressures facing the gay community in real life, especially within a semi-sex-segregated place like the army. Here “a perfect, happy life” denotes a “respectable” mainstream heterosexual life in which Lu marries a “worthy” lady. And “break[ing] his wings,” refers to how



Breaking the Structural Silence39

having a homosexual affair with one’s commander and the concomitant disclosure of the soldier’s sexual orientation will negatively impact one’s career within the army, including eliminating the opportunity for promotion. In sum, Juzishu’s narration of what goes on in Xia’s head points to the enormous social pressure a man has to face should he choose a partner of the same sex. Such a choice is no longer personal once it is made known, as the personal is political, nowhere more so than within the Chinese army. Xu and Yang have elsewhere documented the cross-border production, consumption, and interaction of danmei and its fans around Asia, especially between and among mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.21 What is particularly noteworthy lies in the danmei products produced within but published outside mainland China. Due to the censorship by regulatory agencies (as part of the structural silence), many danmei novels can only be circulated online, especially when they depict (homo)sexually explicit scenes. Nevertheless, the publishers in Taiwan have stepped in to publish unabridged, popular danmei novels. Qilin, for instance, was published by Yuhe Wenhua in Taipei and then distributed in other sinophone areas, including Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Malaysia, by Heping Shuju Co. Ltd., a Hong Kong–based book distributor. Through such interactions, danmei stories from mainland China are arguably no longer geographically bounded but rather travel across boundaries, at least within the Sinosphere and sometimes beyond there to other Asian countries via translation. This cross-national bond formed through reading the same works via translation may help to forge a sense of commonality among citizens across multiple Asian countries. Through such cosmopolitan,22 cross-border, and transcultural flows, danmei novels can provide the readers outside mainland China with a window to experience the pains and difficulties faced by members of the LGBTQ community in China, inviting readers to reflect on the status quo of LGBTQ living conditions. This may thus establish a solidarism, first within the Sinosphere and then elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, uniting danmei producers, consumers, social activists, and the broader public in creating affirmative representation of the LGBTQ community. This solidarism not only situates individuals within a relational interaction with other members of society at large,23 but, more importantly, invites readers-cum-cosmopolitan-citizens in different

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Xi Lin

geographical locations to unite across cultural and national borders in sympathetic recognition of the difficulties experienced by members of the LGBTQ community around them.

Notes  1. Zeng Suodi, “Xiangcheng wangju baokuan, weiyou tupo xiaxian?” Xinwen chenbao, February 24, 2016, B1. 2.  For the news report, see Xinhuashe (Xinhua News), “Wangluo shiting jiemu neirong shenhe tongze tongguo,” July 1, 2017, http://news.xinhuanet .com/zgjx/2017‑07/01/c_136409024.htm. 3.  China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA), Wangluo shiting jiemu neirong shenhe tongze, June 30, 2017, section 8.6.2. 4. Liu Jen-Peng and Ding Naifei, “Reticent Poetics, Queer Politics,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2005). 5.  See, e.g., Mao Yi, “Qing shaonian, 50 sui yishang laonianren aizibing ganran bili zengjia,” Sichuan Zaixian, November 30, 2012, http://sichuan .scol.com.cn/fffy/content/2012‑11/30/content_4394186.htm?node=894; and Chen Ling, “Zhongguo nannan xingjiechu renqun aizibing ganranlu shangsheng,” Xinlang Xinwen, December 1, 2014, http://news.sina.com .cn/c/2014‑12‑01/151131228966.shtml. 6.  Chen Shaoyuan, “Fang’ai jiaoyu ruhe wei haizi zhuqi ‘fanghugang’,” Zhongguo jiaoyu bao, December 2, 2015, 3. 7.  Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), 199–200. 8.  On BL as homophobic in the Japanese context, see Ishida Hitoshi, “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL,” trans. Katsuhiko Suganuma, in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 9.  On this criticism from the gay community, see Wen Xia, “Lun yule shidai de ‘nanse’ xiaofei: Yi ‘shangyin’ weili,” Mei yu shidai, no. 11 (2016). 10. Ishida, “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL.” 11.  On the gong–shou dichotomy in danmei, see chap. 2 in Zhang Jiaojiao, Xingbie lilun shiyu xia de zhongguo wangluo danmei xiaoshuo yanjiu, M.A. thesis, School of Humanities and Arts, Hangzhou Normal University, 2018.



Breaking the Structural Silence41

12. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 13. Juzishu, Qilin, 9 vols. (Taipei: Yuhe Wenhua, 2011). 14. Connell, Masculinities, 76–81. 15. R. W. Connell, The Men and the Boys (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 29. 16. Connell, Masculinities, 78–79. 17.  Fujimoto Yukari, “The Evolution of BL as ‘Playing with Gender’: Viewing the Genesis and Development of BL from a Contemporary Perspective,” trans. Joanne Quimby, in McLelland et al., Boys Love Manga and Beyond. 18. Juzishu, Qilin, vol. 3, 12–13. 19.  In the original Japanese version of “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL,” Ishida uses the term “ōdatsu,” meaning misappropriation. The English translator renders it “appropriation” but “plundering” might better reflect Ishida’s critique of the symbolic violence inherent in the BL he analyzed. 20. Juzishu, Qilin, vol. 3, 133–134. 21.  Xu Yanrui and Yang Ling, “Funü ‘fu’nan: Kuaguo wenhua liudong Zhong de danmei, fuwenhua yu nanxingqizhi de zaizao,” Wenhua yanjiu 3 (2014). See also Asako P. Saito’s chapter in this volume. 22.  For a discussion of Asian cosmopolitanism in the Sinosphere, see Faye Yuan Kleeman, “Hon’yaku to Ajia-teki tokaishugi no toransukaruchā shōhi: Chūgokugo-ken ni okeru Murakami Haruki,” Seizongaku Kenkyū Sentā hōkoku 15 (December 2010). 23. For a discussion of solidarism, see Peter Koslowski, “Solidarism, Capitalism, and Economic Ethics in Heinrich Pesch,” in The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition, ed. Peter Koslowski (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000), 372–373.

chapter 4

BL as a “Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan Thomas Baudinette

Minyou, a twenty-seven-year-old gay Chinese man who regularly travels to Japan for work and who utilizes his business trips as an opportunity to search for a Japanese boyfriend, complained bitterly to me over drinks one evening in 2013 about his experiences of antiChinese xenophobia in Tokyo’s gay district of Shinjuku Ni-chōme. He noted to me that Japanese gay men seemed to specifically avoid him because of his Chinese nationality, and he recounted an experience when he was asked to leave a gay bar by the owner after being taunted about his status as a “hooligan Chinese” (furyō Chūgokujin) by members of the bar’s regular clientele. “I came to Japan to search for the Japanese boyfriend of my dreams,” he lamented, explaining that his desire for a Japanese boyfriend stemmed from his high school years, when he began to consume Japanese boys love (BL) manga and Japanese gay pornographic videos (GV). Reading Japanese BL manga has been fundamental to Minyou’s development as a gay man, helping him come to terms with his sexuality in China’s heteronormative society.1 His experiences of xenophobia in Japan, however, have led him to question his passion for Japanese BL, although he continues to read it as a means to “escape into a fantasy” filled with “loving Japanese guys.” This chapter examines the experiences of Chinese gay men in Japan who, like Minyou, consume Japanese BL manga and view their consumption of these texts as fundamental to their understandings of their gay desires and identities. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with seven Chinese gay men who regularly travel to Japan concerning their reading of Japanese BL, I investigate how BL operates as a “resource of hope” that provides these men with the tools to cope with both Chinese 42



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 43

society’s heteronormativity and instances of anti-Chinese discrimination in Japan’s gay spaces. I chart how consuming BL motivates these seven Chinese gay men to travel to Japan in search of romance, specifically focusing upon how their consumption of BL was situated in opposition to consumption of “Western” gay media and how this rhetorical positioning was utilized to explicitly understand themselves as Asian gay men. Importantly, I explore how consuming BL—in conjunction with other gay media of Japanese origin—came to represent an emancipatory practice which allowed the seven men to challenge the heteronormative understandings underpinning Chinese society by instilling in them a belief in a sexually progressive Japan. I then examine how BL is explicitly drawn upon by these men in the context of experiences of anti-Chinese xenophobia in Japan’s gay culture to construct hopeful discourses of “good Japanese men,” demonstrating how BL remains an important “resource of hope” for the informants in this study. The chapter concludes by reflecting upon the role of Japanese BL as promoting a discourse of gay male desire which these Chinese men view as distinctively Japanese.

Aspirational Reading I draw upon the notion of “aspirational reading” to critically examine how BL has come to be understood and utilized by the seven Chinese gay men whom I interviewed in Tokyo between 2013 and 2016.2 Aspirational reading is a theoretical concept developed in the sociology of consumption to account for how the consumption of texts and products instills a sense of escapist agency among consumers.3 Yet, as Ellen McCracken’s analysis of female readers of Vogue from lower socio-economic backgrounds suggests, aspirational reading/consuming is often coopted by a variety of commercial interests that ultimately negate the emancipatory potential of such practices.4 Nevertheless, for aspirational readers, the escapist potential of the texts which they consume remains meaningful in providing them with narratives which challenge their abject positioning within society, whether this be based in class, gender and sexuality, or ethnic minority status.5 As such, aspirational reading is similar to the romantic escapism or “delusion” (mōsō) which Patrick Galbraith highlights as crucial to heterosexual women’s consumption of such texts.6 Similar to Fran Martin’s work on female BL readers in

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Taiwan, my own work ultimately approaches Japanese BL as material and cultural artifacts, exploring how Chinese gay men consume and understand BL as media in their everyday, transnational lives. Unlike Martin, however, I focus less on how BL represents “sub-cultural capital” that provides “an arena . . . where complex debates about gender and sexuality can be played out” and more on the hopes and aspirations engendered by engaging with not just fantasies of Japan at home in China, but also lived experiences of xenophobic discrimination in Japan.7

Consuming Japanese BL as “Asian” Gay Media All seven informants discovered Japanese BL on the Chinese-language Internet during their mid-to-late adolescence, encountering BL manga at roughly the same time that they all became aware of their attraction to members of the same sex. My previous work on Japanese gay consumers of BL reported similar patterns of discovery.8 In a statement correlating with the experiences of the other six interviewees, twenty-three-year-old Chunhua noted that he coincidentally discovered BL when specifically searching for information to understand his newfound attraction to other men. Japanese BL, typically in the form of fan-translated manga which were unofficially distributed via a number of BL fansites,9 thus became an important resource for all seven men as they began exploring their sexualities. As such, the men’s experiences of encountering BL are very similar to those reported by funü, Chinese female fans of the genre who also typically discover BL during adolescence as they begin exploring their sexuality.10 Initially, the seven men came across Japanese BL in the context of fandom of Chinese danmei, a homoerotic genre influenced by Japanese BL that emerged in the Sinosphere in the 1990s. The informants specifically encountered BL via websites produced by the subset of funü who identified as belonging to the so-called rixi quan (Japanese circle) and who preferred BL works of Japanese origin to those produced throughout the Sinosphere (yuandan quan) or based in Euro-American “slash” fandom (oumei quan), discussed by Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang in this volume. Over the years, however, each of the men (except Dongcheng) began to disassociate themselves from danmei fandom and aligned themselves instead with “BL” consumption, rejecting Chinese-language terminology in favor of Japanese-language terminology for the texts



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 45

Table 4.1. Informants’ demographic details Time Spent in Japan at Time of Interview (purpose)

Japanese Proficiency

Language of Interview

Six-month university exchange (study)

Proficient

Japanese, Chinese

27

Two-week business trip (work)

Intermediate

Japanese, Chinese

2015

22

Six-month language study at private college (study)

Intermediate

Japanese, English

Xueyang

2015

24

Two-week holiday (leisure)

Beginner

English, Chinese

Yixing

2016

24

University exchange (study) [unspecified time frame]

Proficient

Japanese, Chinese

Han

2016

30

University exchange (student) [unspecified time frame]

Beginner

English, Chinese

Dongcheng

2016

24

One-week holiday (leisure)

None

English, Chinese

Pseudonym

Date of Interview Age

Chunhua

2013

23

Minyou

2013

Calvin

  they were consuming, as discussed below. This was often in conjunction with the commencement of studying Japanese language at university, which was also motivated, in part, by their attraction to Japanese BL and Japanese men. During interviews, the seven men explained that they did not understand themselves as “fans” of BL but rather as casual-yet-committed consumers, echoing the sentiments of Japanese gay consumers of BL whom I have discussed elsewhere.11 This was primarily because the informants’ consumption of Japanese BL was embedded within a much more complex pattern of (gay) media consumption. Japanese BL was consumed by the seven men in conjunction with Japaneseproduced GV, which they would also access via the Internet. The sites

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which the men accessed were typically hosted in Taiwan or Hong Kong, where restrictions on pornography are much more relaxed than in mainland China,12 and were administrated by other gay men rather than by funü. The informants explained to me that these sites tended to host both Japanese BL and GV and that they were often conflated together as riben G-pian (Japanese gay porn).13 Thus, the seven men primarily understood their consumption of Japanese BL as akin to consuming pornography, and in this regard my interlocutors are similar to some heterosexual and homosexual fans of BL in the Philippines, who also consider BL to be a kind of “gay porn.”14 Calvin, Yixing, and Dongcheng noted that some of these websites would also circulate manga produced for and by Japanese gay men (known in Japan as geikomi or yarō-kei manga) as riben G-pian.15 These three men expressed a slight preference for such works over BL texts which were produced by and for heterosexual women. The seven men situated their consumption of Japanese BL texts and GV in opposition to “Western” gay pornography and media, which they had also begun consuming during their adolescence but discontinued as their preference for Japanese-produced gay media increased. Twentyfour-year-old Yixing explained that he preferred consuming Japanese gay pornography, since Japanese and Chinese people shared an “Asian culture and race,” and hence it was “natural” for him to be attracted to other Asian men. Indeed, all seven of the informants expressed a belief that consuming “Asian” gay media such as BL was appropriate for them as “Chinese gay men” and that they had difficulty in relating to and becoming aroused by Western gay pornographic texts. In fact, these men’s desire for other Asian men was so strong that they preferred to consume drawings of men which they understood as Asian rather than live action pornography starring Western performers. Attitudes similar to those held by the seven men concerning Japanese pornography’s status as appropriate for “Asian” consumption have been reported in previous research on Chinese and Taiwanese consumers of Japanese pornographic media.16 Consuming Japanese BL along with GV played a crucial role in informing the seven Chinese men about their sexual identities, providing them with narratives of same-sex desire which they explicitly understood as Asian. In consuming Japanese BL, all the informants began to draw upon Japanese-language BL conventions and terminology to make sense of their sexual desires, as well as to categorize their own sexual



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 47

predilections and positioning. This is not an uncommon practice among Chinese-speaking consumers of BL, as Weijung Chang’s work on female Taiwanese BL fans attests.17 One particularly pertinent example of this tendency was the men’s use of the seme–uke paradigm (gong–shou in Chinese) to classify their preferred sexual positions and related gendered identities. Interestingly, no matter what the language of interview, the informants seemed to prefer to use the Japanese-language version of these terms (even Dongcheng, who claimed to lack Japanese proficiency).18 Drawing upon narratives common to both Japanese BL and Chinese danmei works,19 seme (or gong in Chinese) was utilized by the informants to refer to being the active, penetrating partner during sexual intercourse, whereas uke (shou) was utilized to refer to being the passive, penetrated partner. Generally, the seme is also understood to be more “masculine” than the uke within BL and danmei texts, although recently “masculine” uke and “effeminate” seme are emerging.20 By classifying themselves as either seme or uke, the seven interviewees seemed to draw upon the discourses circulating within Japanese BL as the basis for understanding and articulating their gay desires.21 They also explicitly rejected “Western” narratives and discourses of gay desire and identity as foreign and inapplicable to their lives as “Asian” gay men. In fact, Japan itself soon became a significant trope within their personal narratives of same-sex attraction, coming to represent an imagined space where they could freely explore their desires.

Yearning for Japan: Japanese BL as an Empowering Resource For all seven of the informants, Japanese BL came to represent an important “resource of hope” which helped them cope with the heteronormative structuring of Chinese society. Although it is certainly the case that attitudes toward same-sex desire appear to be changing throughout China, with Lisa Rofel noting that a grudging acceptance of sexual minorities has emerged due to the embrace of “cosmopolitanism with Chinese characteristics” by upper-middle-class Chinese,22 living as a publicly “out” gay man is still fraught with difficulties. As a result, none of the seven men had revealed their same-sex attraction to their family or work colleagues, and they thus consumed Japanese BL in private as a way to escape from the pressures of concealing their desire for other men. Twenty-four-year-old Xueyang even recounted that, when he was

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in high school, he used to be relentlessly bullied by his male classmates about his “sissy behavior” and that returning home to “lose himself” in Japanese BL manga was one way that he came to cope with this homophobic bullying. Xueyang’s experiences represent a clear example of how the aspirational reading of Japanese BL helped the informants manage and negotiate being gay in China by providing an escape from difficult circumstances. Through their lived experiences of homophobic d ­ iscrimination, the seven men all saw China as a largely homophobic society. Furthermore, their continued consumption of Japanese BL as a way to escape from such discrimination quickly instilled in these men a strong attraction to Japan as a society supposedly welcoming of same-sex-­desiring ­people. This desire for Japan was expressed via interviews as “Nihon [e] no akogare” (a yearning for Japan) or “Riben de mengxiang” (dreams of Japan). Reading BL through their aspirational lenses, the seven men’s desire for Japan also led them to begin implicitly comparing Japan as it was constructed and depicted within BL texts with their lived experiences of heteronormative Chinese society. The Japan which the informants began to construct through their consumption of BL manga—and internalize through their aspirational reading p ­ ractices— was a Japan which was free of gendered and sexual discrimination, a space which allowed for gender play outside heteronormative structures. The interviewees idealized Japan as a space more accepting of homosexuality than China, with thirty-year-old Han stating that, during his adolescence, he viewed Japan as “the most tolerant country in the world . . . a real gay paradise.” Interestingly, such narratives are quite similar to those reported by Filipino BL consumers who, Tricia Fermin argues, also understand Japan to be a “gender free” and “LGBT friendly” society.23 It is important to note, however, that Japanese society is perhaps just as heteronormative as China’s, with discrimination based on same-sex desire still widespread.24 Indeed, BL has been criticized in the past by various Japanese gay activists and scholars for not presenting accurate images of gay men’s experience.25 As will be discussed in the next section, the Chinese informants’ somewhat uncritical and naïve reading of Japanese BL did in fact lead to issues when they visited Japan. Nevertheless, while living in China and experiencing the pressures of a societal heteronormativity which was explicitly understood as “Chinese,” the idealized Japan which the seven Chinese gay men found



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 49

in Japanese BL became a significant “resource of hope.” Similar to the “queer” fans of Japanese anime, manga, and video games investigated in Katrien Jacob’s study of pornographic consumption in the Sinosphere, the seven men began to draw upon their consumption of Japanese BL as a safe place to explore and “play” with their sexuality.26 As a “resource of hope” which provided the informants with narratives of Asian gay identity, Japanese BL affirmed their same-sex attraction at the same time as mainstream Chinese media and societal discourse positioned such desires as “unnatural” or “dangerous” to public order.27 Calvin noted, for example, that his reading of Japanese BL manga and his “discovery” of the uke character type affirmed that his “wish to be dominated by a big, strong seme” was “completely natural,” whereas Minyou suggested that masturbating while reading “BL sex scenes” helped him to become comfortable with his “gay desires” in general. Ultimately, Japanese BL represented an empowering tool for the seven Chinese men to challenge heteronormative assumptions concerning the “inappropriateness” of same-sex attraction and their aspirational reading of such texts played a crucial role in the development of their gay subjectivities.

Consuming BL to Cope with Anti-Chinese Sentiment in Japan Eventually, the seven informants’ yearning for Japan became so strong that they were all motivated to travel there in order to meet Japanese men for romance or sex. For Chunhua, Calvin, Yixing, and Han, their desire for Japanese boyfriends even motivated them, in part, to go on academic exchange programs to Japanese universities as part of their degrees back in China. The men’s consumption of BL had instilled in them an idealistic image of what kinds of partners they could find in Japan, and each of the men eagerly began participating in Japan’s gay culture, visiting noted gay districts such as Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ni-chōme to meet Japanese men. Yet, upon visiting Japan for the first time, these men came to understand that Japan was not the “gay paradise” which they had imagined while consuming BL in China and, similar to Filipino fans discussed by Fermin,28 the Chinese men quickly learned that Japanese society was in fact quite heteronormative and patriarchal in its attitudes toward sexual minorities. Perhaps even more problematically for the Chinese informants, their experiences of Japan’s gay culture were largely marred by anti-­Chinese sentiments, which seemed to structure discussions of desirability in the

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gay bars which they were frequenting to meet potential partners. As I have written elsewhere, some Japanese gay men draw upon “wider, mainstream perceptions of Chinese as bad-mannered tourists” to broadly position Chinese visitors to Japanese gay districts such as Shinjuku Ni-chōme as “backward hooligans” who threaten the stability of Japan’s gay culture.29 Furthermore, the sociocultural system of “Typing” bars throughout Japanese gay districts as either Japanese-only establishments or gaisen (foreigner-specialty) bars where (Japanese) desires for white men become fetishized makes it difficult for Chinese men to meet Japanese men for romance or sex.30 Indeed, this system of Typing ultimately denied Chinese men such as my interlocutors full participation in Japan’s gay culture, with the fact that Chinese men were expected by Japanese men to visit bars which only catered to Japanese desires for Whiteness leaving Chinese gay men’s yearning for Japanese partners unfulfilled.31 As a result of these “socio-cultural rules” concerning racialized desire in Japan,32 all seven of the informants recounted during interviews that they had experienced anti-Chinese discrimination, although most informants did not mention experiences as explicit or hurtful as Minyou’s experience described in the opening of this chapter. Despite this, the informants’ attraction to Japanese men remained strong, and they continued to consume and read Japanese BL. Their aspirational reading, however, took on new forms as the seven informants began searching in Japanese BL for models of “good Japanese men” whom they could date. By comparing the xenophobic or disinterested Japanese men that they were meeting in Japanese gay districts with the “good Japanese men” which they read about in BL, the seven men maintained their somewhat idealistic understanding of BL texts specifically, and Japan’s gay culture more broadly. Their initial idealism did, however, begin to diminish as their yearning for Japanese boyfriends became tempered by their real-life experiences of anti-Chinese discrimination within Japan. As Minyou stated in order to justify his continued reading of Japanese BL, “there are good Japanese guys out there. . . . BL is filled with wonderful men and I know that I can meet a Japanese man just like this if I keep looking.” Japanese BL thus remained a significant “resource of hope” for the seven men, except that its role in their lives had evolved. Whereas in China Japanese BL had provided a safe space to play with sexuality and challenge Chinese heteronormativity, in Japan BL became a “resource



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 51

of hope” which consistently reaffirmed desires for Japaneseness and became a method of escaping from the xenophobic attitudes experienced in Japan’s gay cultural spaces. Thus, Japanese BL was still important to these seven men’s lives, providing them with narratives of hope for a future successful engagement with “good” Japanese gay men.

Concluding Discussion: The Queer Potentials of BL In his seminal Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz argues that discourses of hope are fundamentally queer due to their inherent deconstruction of the present in favor of a more positive future.33 In examining how Chinese gay men in Japan read Japanese BL aspirationally, this chapter has examined just how BL texts act as “resources of hope” which allow Chinese gay men to build future worlds that empower them to reject Chinese heteronormativity as well as Japanese xenophobia. In so doing, the seven young men whose experiences are explored in this chapter draw upon Japanese BL’s queer potentials to disrupt the problematic every day in order to produce futures which are both emancipatory and empowering. By way of a brief conclusion, I wish to reflect upon this point from the perspective of this edited collection’s focus on “queer transfigurations.” When Japanese BL enters into transnational circulation, it has the potential to provide hopeful discourses to a variety of consumers throughout the Asian region and thus has a profound effect on these consumers’ relationships with their sexuality. For the Chinese gay men who represent the focus of this chapter, and for the other groups whose experiences are explored throughout this collection, Japanese BL also has the potential to disrupt narratives which position same-sex desire as dangerous, illegitimate, and perverted. While it is important to recognize that, in the Japanese context, BL is replete with potentially problematic representational politics,34 it is my belief that the transnationalization of Japanese BL somehow sets the genre free to act in transformative and transgressive ways. In presenting the seven Chinese men whom I interviewed with a discourse of gay desire that they understood as particularly Japanese, BL has empowered them to queer Chinese heteronormative assumptions concerning the appropriateness of samesex attraction and has also provided them with a resource to challenge anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan’s gay culture. Japanese BL, in the transnational space, is thus awash with emancipatory potential, just as

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it historically has been for young women in Japan since the inception of homoerotic shōjo manga in the 1970s. It is thus necessary for further scholarship to investigate this potential throughout a variety of spaces within—and without—Japan.

Notes 1. While homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, there is still a tendency for male homosexuality to be conceptualized as an “abnormal sexual act” within Chinese media; legislation and societal attitudes toward same-sex attraction remain largely unaccepting as a result. See Mei Ning Yan, “Regulating Online Pornography in Mainland China and Hong Kong,” in Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia, ed. Mark McLelland and Vera Mackie (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 388–389; and Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’: The Fate of Chinese Danmei Communities in the 2014 Anti-Porn Campaign,” in The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Mark McLelland (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 169. 2.  Informants were recruited while I was in Tokyo on fieldwork, and I conducted the interviews in a mix of Japanese, Chinese, and English depending upon the informants’ wishes. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded following in vivo coding methods. See Pat Bazaley, Qualitative Data Analysis with NVivo (London: Sage, 2007). The data given in table 4.1 on informants’ language proficiency is based on their own self-assessment. 3. Peter Corrigan, The Sociology of Consumption: An Introduction (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 87. 4.  Ellen McCracken, Decoding Women’s Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), 168–169. 5. McCracken, Decoding Women’s Magazines, 170. 6. Patrick W. Galbraith, “Moe Talk: Affective Communication among Female Fans of Yaoi in Japan,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 7.  Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: BL as Goods to Think with in Taiwan (with a Revised and Updated Coda)” in Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and



“Resource of Hope” among Chinese Gay Men in Japan 53

Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 193. 8. Thomas Baudinette, “Japanese Gay Men’s Attitudes Towards ‘Gay Manga’ and the Problem of Genre,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 3, no. 1 (2017). 9.  Such fan-translation practices are central not only to Chinese BL fandom, but also to Chinese fandom of Japanese manga, anime, and video games more broadly. See Yang and Xu, “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” 168; and Wei-Ming Ng, “The Consumption and Perception of Japanese ACG (Animation-Comic-Game) among Young People in Hong Kong,” International Journal of Comic Art 12, no. 1 (2010): 468. 10. Chunyu Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much: Chinese Women’s Paradoxical Fandom of ‘Boys Love’ Fiction,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 3 (2016): 253–254. 11.  Baudinette, “Japanese Gay Men’s Attitudes,” 60. 12.  Yan, “Regulating Online Pornography”; and Heung-wah Wong and Hoi-yan Yau, Japanese Adult Videos in Taiwan (London: Routledge, 2014). 13.  A similar tendency can be seen on Japan’s massive public access bulletin board known as Ni-channeru (2channel), with BL and Japanese (and Western) gay pornography grouped together for consumption by gay men under the title onani-yō okazu gazō (side-dish pictures for masturbation). See Baudinette, “Japanese Gay Men’s Attitudes,” 67. 14.  Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines: Conflict, Resistance and Imagination through and beyond Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 13, no. 3 (2013), http://japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3/fermin.html. 15.  Calvin preferred to give his “English” name, and I have assigned him an English pseudonym to reflect this. 16.  Katrien Jacobs, People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet (Bristol, U.K.: Intellect, 2012), 38; and Wong and Yau, Japanese Adult Videos, 18. 17.  Weijung Chang, “Exploring the Significance of ‘Japaneseness’: A Case Study of Fujoshi’s Fantasies in Taiwan,” in Lavin, Yang, and Zhao, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols, 185. 18.  An example would be Xueyang’s utterance “wo xiang wo jiu shi yi ge ‘seme’” (I think that I am a “seme”). I note here that Chinese danmei terms ultimately derive from Japanese. 19.  Nishimura Mari, BL karuchā-ron: Bōizu rabu ga wakaru hon (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2015), 127–155.

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20.  Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much,” 261. 21.  On the relationship between BL and gay slang in Japan in recent decades, see Ishida Hitoshi, “Tachi/neko, seme/uke,” in Sei no kotoba, ed. Inoue Shōichi, Saitō Hikaru, Shibuya Tomomi, and Mitsuhashi Junko (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2020). 22.  Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality and Public Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 121. 23.  Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love.” 24.  See Sunagawa Hideki, “Tayō na shihai, taiyō na teikō,” Gendai shisō 43, no. 16 (2015). 25.  See Satō Masaki, “Shōjo manga to homofobia,” in Kuia sutadīzu ’96, ed. Kuia Sutadīzu Henshū Iinkai (Tokyo: Nanatsumori Shokan, 1996); Tagame Gengorō, Nihon no gei erotikku āto, Vol. 1: Gei zasshi sōseiki no sakkatachi (Tokyo: Potto Shuppan, 2003), 13; and Ishida Hitoshi, “Gei ni kyōkan suru joseitachi,” Yurīka 39, no. 4 (2007). 26. Jacobs, People’s Pornography, 174–179. 27.  Yan, “Regulating Online Pornography,” 389. 28.  Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love.” 29.  Thomas Baudinette, “Ethnosexual Frontiers in Queer Tokyo: The Production of Racialized Desire in Japan,” Japan Forum 28, no. 4 (2016): 481. 30.  Baudinette, “Ethnosexual Frontiers in Queer Tokyo,” 475. 31.  Baudinette, “Ethnosexual Frontiers in Queer Tokyo,” 482. 32.  Baudinette, “Ethnosexual Frontiers in Queer Tokyo,” 475. 33. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1. 34.  See Ishida Hitoshi, “Gei ni kyōkan suru joseitachi.”

chapter 5

Straight Men, Gay Buddies The Chinese BL Boom and Its Impact on Male Homosociality Wei Wei

In mainland China the past two decades have witnessed growing public attention to danmei, or boys love (BL), a female-oriented media genre entailing fantasized male–male romantic and erotic relationships.1 Despite the popularity of BL being still largely limited to its fandom, in recent years it has started to impact Chinese society at large through integrating into a diverse range of local and global mainstream media and celebrity cultures.2 Rather than focusing on works or fandom, as most scholarship to date has done, including many chapters in this volume, this chapter examines the social impact of danmei, with particular attention to how it has been reshaping the construction of heteromasculinity in contemporary Chinese society. In Japan, where BL culture originally developed, while the production and consumption of BL is primarily a female-oriented and femaledominated field, one of its significant impacts on Japanese culture lies in its effect on local constructions of masculinity. It has been argued that women’s intensive engagement as both producers and consumers of male–male romance stories has played a role in the transformation of images of masculinity in Japanese popular culture.3 Another important aspect of BL’s social impact in Japan involves the representation of gay men and its implication for LGBTQ politics. Despite the fact that BL deals with male–male romance and sexuality, some gay critics have accused the genre of repudiating real (male) homosexuality. While recent BL works have increasingly featured stories of gay men coming out and the characters’ gradual acceptance with the society, these more gay-friendly representations have also been criticized for not addressing

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the reality of homophobia that the gay community still has to struggle against.4 While in cyberspace BL is becoming globalized, as Mark McLelland demonstrated in his comparative studies of BL cultures in Japan and North America, this process of globalization has been accompanied by a simultaneous localization of BL.5 By focusing on “gao-ji” (搞基), an Internet meme recently popular among Chinese urban youth to depict intimate relationships between heterosexual men, this chapter provides an interesting case to illustrate the localized impact of BL in the Chinese context. Originally entering Mandarin from Cantonese, in which the term is pronounced “gaau-gei,” gao-ji means engaging in male homosexual conduct but is associated with strong homophobic and derogatory connotations. Among other things, the increasing presence of BL in the public arena is arguably a driving force in the shift of gao-ji from a stigmatized label imposed on gay men to a trendy practice—a practice not unlike the concept of “bromance”6—for young straight men to explore newly created homosocial space.

Funü, Coupling, and the Media Carnival The creators and fans of BL are primarily associated with the self-­ deprecating Japanese appellation “fujoshi”—which can literally be translated “rotten girls”—or its Mandarin equivalent, funü. These women are “rotten” because they fantasize about male homoeroticism rather than the heteronormative romance that societal norms dictate. As Patrick Galbraith vividly demonstrates in his ethnographic study of fujoshi sub­ culture in Japan, these fans have come to view all of culture through their “rotten filters,” constantly on the lookout for homoerotic interpretations of everyday situations and events, and then share with each other these moments of “moe,” which Galbraith defines as “a euphoric response to fantasy characters.”7 The narrative structure that characterizes moe chat, or BL more generally, lies in the rule of “coupling” that pairs two male characters from the original texts or events into an imagined homosexual relationship. Since there is no biological sexual difference existing in the all-male world of BL, creators make couplings by freely combining characters with all sorts of gender attributes and power dynamics as they like. Readers, in the meantime, are able to search for their own preferred couplings among all the possibilities offered or else create their own. This is indeed a source of pleasure for both readers and creators of BL.8



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First introduced through pirated Taiwanese translations of Japanese BL manga in the early 1990s, BL has been flourishing in mainland China since the early 2000s. The Internet has played a crucial role in the formation of fan identity, the building of fan community, and the production and circulation of original and derivative BL works in China as well as in the broader Sinosphere.9 Though BL started largely as part of youth culture, from the end of the first decade of the 2000s, something of a “BL boom” has had unprecedented impact on mainstream culture. Due to the media censorship imposed by the government, the danmei boom in China does not necessarily entail an explosion of BL representation in the media; rather, it is better interpreted as an enhanced BL sensitivity—sensitivity to the social imaginary of male homoerotic desire and relationships—that has widely penetrated into popular awareness across society. For instance, the convention of coupling, a key element of BL narratives, is no longer limited to BL fandom but increasingly appropriated by mainstream media to boost public attention and commercial success. Nowadays, “CP” (coupling) has become a buzzword appearing in the daily vocabulary of Chinese urban youth. To give a recent example, the BBC hit television series Sherlock, which first aired in 2010, has won numerous awards and in recent years has been one of the most watched and pirated drama series in the world. This show has a large fan base that is active across multiple social networking platforms, from Twitter to Tumblr to Facebook. Although it is difficult to quantify any given group of fans, circumstantial evidence indicates that female BL fans constitute a sizable percentage of this fan base.10 As discussed by Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang in their chapter in this volume, there are numerous Chinese danmei websites that host Sherlock fan fiction, inspired by the drama, depicting Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson, as a couple. When U.K. prime minister David Cameron visited China in late 2014 and opened an account on Weibo, a Chinese social networking site and smart phone application similar to Twitter, the top request for him, mostly from BL fans, was to speed up the release of the new season of the drama.11 Another, even more sensational case took place at the 2013 Spring Festival Gala on China Central Television (CCTV). The playful teasing by magician Liu Qian of pianist Li Yundi and singer Wang Leehom was widely discussed on social media and across the Chinese Internet. Ever since Li and Wang played the piano together at the gala the year before, these two handsome and talented male stars had been perceived

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as a “national CP” in the entertainment world.12 During Li Yundi and Liu Qian’s joint “Magic Piano” segment, Li tried to understand Liu’s gestures as they exchanged whispers. In front of the national audience, Liu quipped to Li, “Looking for someone? Get Leehom!” Li was left visibly embarrassed, which forced Liu to save the situation: “Sorry, sorry, this year, it’s me.” With regard to Liu’s skit, netizens applauded it as the best part of the night, greatly amusing everyone. Even though CCTV issued an official statement afterward that Liu Qian’s gay teasing was not planned by the directing team and would not appear in reruns of the show, the program and its producers could not avoid the suspicion of deliberately “selling rottenness” to boost ratings. In addition to Liu’s gay joke, several other performances in the gala also involved male homosexual subtexts that invited Chinese netizens to view the performances through their “rotten filters,” which made it the gayest CCTV Spring Festival Gala ever.13 As manifested in these two cases—whether intervening in the diplomatic relationship between China and another country, or queering the most orthodox media event held by the Chinese government— the unprecedented social presence of BL has profoundly transformed the landscape of contemporary public culture. This can be attributed to a largely female BL fandom that has come to garner considerable consumer power as the result of rapid economic growth over recent decades. Moreover, we cannot overlook the fact that China has a long, rich tradition of male homosociality, which remains a significant part of the contemporary cultural imaginary, not only providing the fertile soil in which the production and circulation of danmei narratives and fantasies have taken root, but also itself serving as part of the discursive context for the appearance and mainstreaming of the gao-ji phenomenon.14

The Rise of the Gao-ji Meme First imported from Hong Kong, gao-ji is, as noted above, the Mandarin pronunciation of the Cantonese “gaau-gei,” a strongly derogatory term for engaging in male homosexual activity. With the spread of Hong Kong popular culture to mainland China, the term gao-ji entered everyday Mandarin as a vulgar loanword.15 Thanks to the dissemination through the Internet, however, in recent years the word gao-ji has become popular among Chinese urban youth to describe intimate relationships between two straight people, especially between two young



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men. In addition, Chinese netizens have invented two new Mandarin terms that were derived from gao-ji but for which Cantonese has no equivalents. One is “ji-qing” (基情), meaning, roughly, “gay affection.” As of June 2017, the user-produced online Baidu Encyclopedia defines this term as referring to “the subtle affection and love shared by two persons of the same sex that lies in between ordinary friendship and homosexual love.”16 The other new term is “ji-you” (基友), meaning “gay buddy.” While it can still be used to refer to homosexuals, according to the Baidu Encyclopedia, it is more commonly used in reference to “samesex friends who are very close.”17 With their meaning increasingly distanced from their original reference to male homosexuality, ji-you and ji-qing are more frequently used by urban youths. According to a longitudinal research study on buzzword-use among youth conducted at a university in central China, 76.3 percent of the 337 participating students were using ji-you in their daily lives, which made it one of the most popular buzzwords in 2013.18 This usage has also spread beyond urban youth culture and begun appearing in other mainstream spheres. In 2012, for instance, an article inviting readers to “talk about ji-you” appeared in Shanghai’s highly influential newspaper, Xin min wan bao. While the article noted that the term originally referenced male homosexuality, it emphasized that the current meaning of ji-you embodies an intimate and affectionate friendship between men. The writer referred to well-known stories about literati from ancient Chinese history and suggested they were examples of good ji-you who treated each other with great loyalty and real affection, without regard to social conventions.19 Several years later, the mainstream Chinese website Ifeng.com published a collection of press photos from the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro highlighting intimate “ji-qing” interactions between ten pairs of male athletes as they celebrated their victories, including Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochet, and Rafael Nadar and Marc Lopez.20 Given China’s history of symbolic annihilation of homosexuality through strict media censorship by the government,21 such as the recent ban on reference to homosexuality in online media discussed by Xi Lin in his chapter in this volume, the prevalence of the homosexually themed gao-ji discourse among straight-identified urban youth might seem quite surprising. As a self-identified gay scholar who has long been concerned with the visibility of homosexuality in Chinese society, I found myself unable to ignore the unexpected rise of gao-ji discourse

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or treat it as mere online play devoid of deep social and political meaning. In order to better understand the use of gao-ji and other related homosexually themed terms in contemporary Chinese youth culture, I interviewed eighteen young people who were familiar with usage of gaoji discourse from 2013 to 2015 at my own university in Shanghai. They were undergraduate and graduate students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four enrolled in my sociology courses but varied in terms of gender, sexual orientation, place of birth, and family background. I did not seek a generalizable sample of urban youth, but instead recruited participants from a setting where I believed these usages might occur most frequently.22 I also initiated informal conversations on this subject with young people in various Chinese cities. They were all familiar with the gao-ji discourse to different extents, so the research findings drawn from this university setting can, nevertheless, arguably be seen as representative of the urban youth population more broadly. While some of my findings will be reported below, my key argument drawn from this research is that the development of gao-ji discourse, as a new gendered label, helps accommodate previously acceptable homosocial behaviors and meanwhile distinguish these behaviors from “real,” still stigmatized homosexuality. While offering a culturally recognized space for heterosexual young men to participate in more emotionally and physically intimate heteromasculine behaviors with other men, the term reinforces a certain heteromasculinity in the face of a growing public awareness of homosexuality.23 How did gao-ji shift from a homophobic and derogatory slang word stigmatizing gay men to a trendy buzzword primarily used by straight men to refer to their same-sex friendships in mainland China? To be sure, changing attitudes toward homosexuality as an embodiment of cosmopolitanism that the young generations in China are eager to embrace might help explain such a tremendous shift.24 But this cannot account for the whole story. Drawing insights from the literature on BL in general and danmei specifically, I argue that danmei media and ­culture have had a significant impact on the rise of the gao-ji discourse, as well as on the shifting heteromasculinity it manifests.

Female Gaze and Changing Heteromasculinity The social significance of BL, especially in regard to the status of women, has been one area drawing particular attention in academic scholarship.



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Focusing on fans’ reception and appropriation of BL, researchers have noted that BL fandom has provided a “female gendered space,”25 which has broader implications for gender and sexuality politics in society. The manipulation of male characters to create sexual fantasy scenarios is argued to empower female writers and readers, as they are able to challenge both heteronormativity and hierarchal gender order through their participation in BL fandom.26 In positioning males as objects of female desire, as Chunyu Zhang argues, such practices can be read as one form of “female gaze”—a kind of subversion of the male gaze articulated in Laura Mulvey’s classic essay—in which women become the agents of spectatorship, redirecting the objectifying gaze toward male protagonists.27 While tracing the shifting meanings of gao-ji and related terms is beyond the scope of this chapter, my research does suggest the important role funü—that is, female danmei fans—and the funü gaze have played in popularizing the use of these homosexually themed terms. One student told me how he got to know the new meaning of gao-ji: “After I entered college, people around me said this term more frequently. There are a few funü in my class. It is because of their influence that we got familiar with these terms” (male fourth-year student). Another, female student was a funü herself. As she demonstrated the use of gao-ji discourse to me, everyday situations and events were open to reinterpretation as male homoerotic encounters under her female erotic gaze: “We were traveling. If two guys insisted on sharing a room, [we assumed] they must be doing some gao-ji things. If a group of friends were hanging out together and two boys suddenly disappeared, then we would say there was ji-qing [between them]” (female third-year student). Given that the male gaze plays a critical role in shaping femininity,28 a similar question is worth being asked, about how the rise of the female gaze, enabled by women’s increasing economic power and social status, might be impacting the construction of masculinities in the society (a question also addressed in this volume by Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin). Men (and women) do not assume gender roles in isolation, but rather play the role they believe the other party expects—or even demands— them to play. While their impressions of women’s images of men may be unfounded or even distorted, the belief in such an image nevertheless becomes determinative in the process of identity formation.29 Indeed, I have demonstrated a clear linkage between the female gaze and the projection of heteromasculinity in my previous work on gao-ji discourse.30

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Dyadic pairing is one of the defining features of ji-you relationships. It is quite easy to see the connection between gao-ji jokes and the “coupling” games played by funü, as well illustrated in the examples provided by my funü student quoted above. Dyadic pairing is a departure from the mainstream models of male homosociality such as gemenr, or “brother,” relationships.31 One individual I interviewed articulated the difference between ji-you and gemenr very well: “The relationship between good gemenr indicates strong loyalty. Good ji-you describes an even more intimate relationship . . . [in which each] feels like a partner [to the other]. Gemenr get together to have drinks and get drunk. Making great sacrifices to help your friend is an act of gemenr. But for ji-you, they are more like a couple and always together” (male fourthyear student). Further, the Mandarin term gemenr has a clear sense of collectivity associated with it and is usually used in reference to a group rather than a pair of men. By contrast, as we have already seen, ji-you is associated with a more personal, more intimate relationship that is almost always dyadic. This dyadic norm allows men to proclaim a close same-sex friend as ji-you as a way of demonstrating emotional intimacy, and even allowing more space for heteromasculine behaviors. All university students with whom I spoke concurred that same-sex ji-you relationships, or having “ji-qing with each other,” as the relationships are often described, is characterized by closeness and intimacy. When I pushed them for details, these students pointed to physical touch and bodily contact as being common between “close” ji-you. One explained, “Two men are very close and share lots of physical contact. For example, [if there is] one boy hugging another from behind, people would tease them for having ji-qing” (male first-year student). Another suggested it might involve “slapping each other’s butts” (female third-year student). One characteristic of orthodox heteromasculinity as defined by scholars such as Máirtín Mac an Ghaill is the rejection of homosocial intimacy, entailing the avoidance of both physical and emotional intimacy with other men.32 Seen in this light, the behavioral patterns associated with ji-qing or ji-you relationships as described above might seem to be transgressing those gender norms that stigmatize homosocial tactility. Given the very tactile homosociality common in Chinese classic literature and among literati as noted above,33 however, we must remain mindful that the relationship between heteromasculinity and



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homosocial intimacy varies significantly in different cultural contexts. While, as I suggested earlier, the same-sex tactile behaviors found among ji-you can be attributed to a homosocial tradition in China that to some extent continues today, I would add the influence of female gaze from these funü encourages such behaviors. These interactional dynamics between funü and young men under the funü gaze is encapsulated in the following comment from a teen funü: “We have several CPs [couples] in my class. People around them often tease these pairs for being CPs. After a while, they also [started to] behave like CPs. This is quite amusing” (female third-year middle school student). And thus, we can see that the funü gaze not only brings voyeuristic enjoyment to these BL fans; as elucidated in this section, it also contributes to the transformation of heteromasculinity itself. As these “rotten” women and girls in contemporary Chinese society exercise their female erotic gaze, new spaces for the exploration of heteromasculinity have been opened up. More specifically, female danmei fans who seek voyeuristic pleasures through fantasizing about male same-sex romance play a distinctive role on the production of gao-ji narratives and the gao-ji imagination. While a semantic analysis of a changing homosexually themed discourse is fascinating, an investigation in terms of the political economy of this discourse is needed to further understand the significance of its broader social impact. Although danmei fiction seems to be extremely popular, due to the politically sensitive and culturally taboo aspects of its content as well as the fragmented nature of its online fan communities, it is impossible to accurately estimate the size of the danmei audience in China. However, researchers have suggested that university-aged women constitute the majority of this audience, and the number of fans in junior and senior high schools seems to be increasing.34 According to the female teen funü I cited earlier, a girl in her final year at one of the most prestigious middle schools in Chongqing, at least two-thirds of her female classmates are regular danmei readers. Therefore, we should not underestimate the increasing consumer and discursive power female danmei fans have regarding Chinese society. As noted above, even CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala—in spite of being a leading platform for propagating the official voice of the Chinese nationstate—was observed to “sell rottenness” to boost viewer ratings and commercial interests.35 In this sense, the “girl power” of female danmei

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fans, has arguably reshaped the landscape of contemporary Chinese popular culture. The other side of the same coin is the growing concern about the so-called “negative social effects” of danmei subculture, which began to provoke an anti-danmei campaign in recent years as part of a broader concern over public morals. For instance, thirty-two BL female writers were arrested in Zhengzhou under the charge of creating and distributing homoerotic content in 2011.36 The more recent harsh persecution of a female BL writer captured national and international attention again. “Lady Tianyi,” as her fans call her, was sentenced to a decade in prison for “producing and selling pornography” in November 2018, a sentence which has led many people to question the fairness of the judicial system.37 Such an anti-BL backlash is rooted in the fear that the genre’s depictions of both homosexuality and sex itself would corrupt the values and morality of younger generations. Whether appearing in danmei media or rearticulated in the form of gao-ji discourse, men’s bodies and sexuality have become the object of the gaze and fantasies. In sum, such a seeming degradation of men’s power and status via their objectification in danmei media, coupled with a public concern that boys are becoming more feminine and even increasingly turning homosexual, has contributed to, if not precipitated, a heated debate around “saving boys” in contemporary China.38 Such debates continue within the arena of sexual politics. How, in this context, should we address the growing concern over masculinity, or in other words, the social anxiety around “the crisis of masculinity”? As a scholar and as an individual, I fully stand by progressive actors— including some individuals engaged in danmei creation and consumption and even gao-ji discourse—who are promoting gender equality and sexual diversity in our society. As Frank Mort has pointed out about Britain, in China too it is a time of “breaking open masculinity’s bestkept secret; forcing men to look self-consciously at themselves and their identities, rather than as the concealed norm of power and privilege.” Men’s “vulnerability” in this era—as reflected in both danmei and the gao-ji discourse it has helped facilitate—could be “a potential source for change.”39 From this perspective, the current anxieties surrounding young men in Chinese society are not really about a crisis of masculinity but, rather, a crisis of patriarchy. Men find themselves standing at the crossroad of historical change—one that might offer the possibility of moving



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away from the privileged position offered via traditional hegemonic masculinity, and adjusting to the new expectations of a more “inclusive masculinity,”40 one that allows for, if not demands, such behaviors as expressing feelings, valuing intimacy, and even dismissing homophobia. Such a possibility would truly demonstrate the potentially profound impact of gao-ji discourse on masculinity in China.

Notes 1.  This chapter is based on research originally published as Wei Wei, “Good Gay Buddies for Lifetime: Homosexually Themed Discourse and the Construction of Heteromasculinity among Chinese Urban Youth,” Journal of Homosexuality 64, no.12 (2017), reframed to draw greater attention to the role of danmei (boys love/BL). 2.  Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom and Cultural Globalization from Below,” in Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 3. 3. Mark McLelland and James Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 15–16. 4.  In an article originally published in Japanese in 2007, Ishida Hitoshi, “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL,” in McLelland et al., Boys Love Manga and Beyond, summarizes the debate on BL concerning that point and examines what he identifies as homophobia within the genre. 5.  Mark McLelland, “Local Meanings in Global Space: A Case Study of Women’s ‘Boy Love’ Web Sites in Japanese and English,” Mots Pluriels, no. 19 (2001), http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP1901mcl.html. 6.  Heather Brook, “Bros before Ho(mo)s: Hollywood Bromance and the Limits of Heterodoxy,” Men and Masculinities 18, no. 2. 7. Patrick W. Galbraith, “Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among ‘Rotten Girls’ in Contemporary Japan,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 1 (2011): 215, 221. 8.  Galbraith, “Fujoshi,” 221. 9.  Yang and Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom,” 4.

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10. Kathryn Hemmann, “Queering the Media Mix: The Female Gaze in Japanese Fan Comics,” Transformative Works and Cultures 20 (2015), http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article /view/628/540. 11. “Gay Love Theory as Fans Relish Sherlock in China,” China Blog, BBC News, January 2, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog -25550426. 12. Chunyu Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much: Chinese Women’s Paradoxical Fandom of ‘Boys’ Love’ Fiction,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 3 (2016): 263. 13.  Shen Qing and Wei Wei, “Guojia he shichang gongtong xingsu de xingbie duoyuan zaixian: Ku du 2013 yangshi chunwan,” Guoji xinwenjie 1 (2014). 14. Kam Louie, “Chinese Masculinity Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Westernizing, Easternizing and Globalizing wen and wu,” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 9, no. 1 (2014). 15.  Day Wong, “Hybridization and the Emergence of ‘Gay’ Identities in Hong Kong and in China,” Visual Anthropology 24, nos. 1–2 (2011). 16.  “Ji-qing,” http://baike.baidu.com/view/2188595.htm, accessed May 22, 2017. 17.  “Ji-you,” http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=VHJXq4MfBdxlXMnrV2da LXbkFQghcgEEqCmiyZXCQkYvgIx0EOqM1v7fHzYPq7LVUa1EUHzCtnNc UJ6SD0ZTtkX38yDNCdBjS-3x9o9Uq2a, accessed May 22, 2017. 18.  Wang Daoyang and Wei Wei, “Daxuesheng liuxingyu bianqian de xinlixue fenxi,” Dangdai qingnian yanjiu 1 (2014): 95. 19.  Zhong Han, “Shuo ‘ji-you’,” Xin min wan bao, April 14, 2012. 20. “Liyue aoyun shi da jiqing shike,” Ifeng.com, August 20, 2016, https://2016.ifeng.com/a/20160820/49811890_0.shtml. 21.  Wei Wei, “Fuhaoxing miejue dao shenchaxing gongkai: Feichengwurao dui tongxinglian de zaixian,” Kaifang shidai, no. 2 (2010). 22. Eric Anderson and Mark McCormack, “Cuddling and Spooning: Heteromasculinity and Homosocial Tactility among Student-Athletes,” Men and Masculinities 18, no. 2 (2015): 219. 23.  Wei Wei, “Good Gay Buddies.” 24.  Lisa Rofel, Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 25. Akiko Mizoguchi, “Male–Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of Yaoi Fictions,” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal 25 (2003): 65.



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26. James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love in Shôjo Manga,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 3 (2006). 27. Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much,” 254; Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent,” 844. 28.  Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen: The Journal of the Society for Education in Film and Television 16, no. 3 (1975). 29.  Kevin Goddard, “‘Looks Maketh the Man’: The Female Gaze and the Construction of Masculinity,” Journal of Men’s Studies 9, no. 1 (2000). 30.  Wei, “Good Gay Buddies.” 31.  Gemenr is a term literally meaning brother(s). When the term is used in this context, it lightheartedly describes close male friends who often engage in unisex, homosocial business, and social activities, which can be for instrumental or expressive purposes, or a mixture of both. 32.  Máirtín Mac an Ghaill, The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling (Buckingham, U.K.: Open University Press, 1994). 33.  Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 34.  Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much,” 250. 35.  Shen and Wei, “Guojia he shichang,” 80. 36. Erika Junhui Yi, “Reflection on Chinese Boys’ Love Fans: An Insider’s View,” Transformative Works and Cultures 12 (2013), https://journal .transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/424. 37. Javier C. Hernandez and Albee Zhang, “Writer of Erotic Novels in China Is Jailed for Producing Gay Pornography,” New York Times, November 19, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/world/asia /tianyi-china-erotic-novels-prison.html. 38.  Sun Yunxiao, Li Wendao, and Zhao Xia, Zhengjiu Nanhai (Beijing: Zuojia Chuvabshe, 2009). 39.  Frank Mort, Cultures of Consumption: Masculinities and Social Space in Late Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1996), 17. 40. Eric Anderson, Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities (London: Routledge, 2009).

chapter 6

“Send Them to Mars!” Boys Love Erotica and Civil Rights in Hong Kong Katrien Jacobs and Han Hau Lai

Hong Kong boys love (BL) fans are invested in manga and animation trends and consume materials made in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China. Historically, BL manga traveled from Japan to Taiwan in the 1970s and was soon after that introduced to Hong Kong.1 BL fandoms in Hong Kong since then have been comparable to those of Taiwan and have started intersecting with mainland Chinese fandoms since the 1990s.2 Hong Kong BL fans, like those from Taiwan and mainland China discussed elsewhere in this volume, call the genre “danmei” and refer to themselves as “funü”—which literally translates to rotten (fu) girls (nü), an adaptation of the term fujoshi (rotten girls) from Japan. While BL manga and anime are considered degenerate or “rotten” genres in the mainstream media in the above three regions, BL fans’ embrace of the identity funü indicates a playful self-mockery and an appreciation of a “perverse” imagination. This identity label and its selfconscious “rotten” imagination coincide with the rise of transnational queer sinophone online cultures defined by shared media products and culture flows. As Fran Martin explains, BL fandoms could be an excellent example of positioning a different way of conceptualising transnational queer Chinese cultures, one that allows us to see areas of commonality across geographically dispersed Chinese communities but focuses on how these arise from rhizomatic cross-flows in the present rather than from “deep” cultural heritage. According to this view, the starting point for approaching contemporary Chinese cultures is 68



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acknowledgment of their difference, multiplicity and fragmentation, but we should recognise, too, that new forms of shared experience are also enabled as a result of transnational flows of media and migration in a contemporary globalising world.3 Our own observations over the course of our larger project as well as Hong Kong BL fans we have interviewed have confirmed that most fans follow and access transnational social media sites, mostly originating in Taiwan and mainland China, while they fight for recognition within the Hong Kong local media, thus establishing BL as an excellent lens through which to examine this phenomenon. The essay will show how Hong Kong BL fandoms are nurtured by a transnational queer sinophone imagination that is also used to embrace a localized identity and comment on Hong Kong civil rights. The most notable actions in defense of a prodemocracy movement happened during the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, which peaked in fall 2014 and was disbanded in early 2015.4 Despite widening political rifts between mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, BL fans expressed solidarity between these three cultures. As exemplified in the slogan of the Facebook page Danmei Camp, “BL rules everything and gayness (jiqing) unifies the world,” fans defended BL erotica as a way to experience sexual play, lightheartedness, and creative stimulation despite an atmosphere of conflict.5 Many Hong Kong BL fans were adamant about using queer fantasies to support the prodemocracy movement, while others defended LGBTQI rights and the right to distribute queer sexually explicit media or “meat pictures” (rou tu), which often include nudity, sexual intercourse, and sexual paraphilias such as BDSM. With this Hong Kong case study we hope to show that Hong Kong BL fandom is maturing into a socially responsible and reflexive subculture in its tendency to absorb and reimagine online erotica with an activist-political edge. In 2001, Japanese theorist Hiroki Azuma posited in Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals that animation fans thrive on a kind of erotic attachment (“moe”) toward their preferred animated characters. He believed that because of a strong attachment to characters, fans would turn their back on a search for larger social or political worldviews.6 It will be shown here that these perceived solipsistic and “animalistic” online behaviors are changing: BL fans do indeed provoke social media users into deeper ethical or activist approaches to characters

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as well as fostering an activist defense of LGBTQI sexuality and erotic enjoyment. For instance, the fandom’s penchant for sexualizing activist leaders could be seen as a frivolous and escapist urge, but it can also be seen as an endorsement of a new type of leadership. Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang have analyzed similar critiques of male leaders in mainland Chinese BL microfictions, specifically decoding father–son stories that re-order traditional power structures within the family and within Chinese society at large.7 Hong Kong fans use a similar imagination to reflect on the political establishment and to eroticize a new type of charismatic leader. In recent years we have carried out most of our fieldwork on various social media sites and we have chosen in this chapter to focus on several Hong Kong Chinese-language BL Facebook pages and attitudes expressed by fans thereon toward democracy and sexually explicit media. In actuality, however, these fans are a polymedia generation using hashtags to indicate and search for their favorite couplings as well as for manga and anime across various social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the mainland Chinese sites Weibo and Baidu Tieba (a bulletin board system, or BBS, on Baidu). Around the time of the Umbrella Movement, Facebook was a very popular medium for Hong Kong BL imagery, the reason for our focus on it here. At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that Facebook has very strict regulations on sexually explicit media and bans representations of genitals, buttocks, and female breasts (excluding images of breastfeeding and postmastectomy chests), as well as sexual intercourse, along with acts of soliciting sex or hooking up by means of sexually explicit language. It does not seem to matter if an image is didactic, has artistic value, or sheds light on a pertinent issue in regard to sexuality.8 In order to explore how BL fans use sexually explicit media across different sites, we examined sexualized depictions posted on Facebook and other social media sites based on the popular Japanese BL anime series Yuri!!! on Ice, released in 2016, after the Umbrella Movement wound down. Specifically, we compared the visuals of Yuri!!! on Ice on the Facebook pages Funuiology, Boysloveonly, and Danmei Camp with images posted on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. As a result, our Facebook case study includes posts shared between late September 2014 and January 2017 across a range of sites, but our primary focus is on two Hong Kong–­ specific fandom pages: Alex Lester Hehe and Funuiology, as well as the Hong Kong–inclusive sinophone BL pages Boysloveonly and Danmei



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Camp,9 some of whose administrators are from Hong Kong and thus popular with Hong Kong fans.

The Local Brotherhood (Politically Radical, Sexually Chaste) The prodemocracy Umbrella Movement began its extended occupation of three major thoroughfares in the city on September 26, 2014, impacting many sectors of higher education as well as the mass media and social media sphere at large. The movement had initially erupted to demand a new electoral system for Hong Kong that would operate independently of tight control by the mainland Chinese Communist Party. The movement also extended beyond this initial goal as people made efforts to fight to protect Hong Kong’s free-speech culture and media sphere, which included discussions about women’s rights and queer sexuality. It was an “intersectional” movement in terms of its coalescence of different activist groups, age groups, ethnic and sexual minorities, media outlets, artist collectives, and personalities who all at once were trying out various methods of activism. Since the city-state of Hong Kong is a very compact geographic region and the occupied sites were widely dispersed across the city, it was fairly easy for people to become immersed both through their walks in the city and through hourly updates on social media. Within this multitiered movement, there were large groups of BL fans who supported the movement by publishing fantasies about the student leaders alongside more regular movement updates. While most fans and BL Facebook pages took a cautious stance toward direct participation in political activism and criticized or banned such posts, the involvement of some fans sparked debate across the fandom about what they perceived as the necessity to be less fantasy-focused and more engaged with actual politics. One Umbrella Movement–focused BL Facebook page, Alex Lester HeHe, or “Alexter,” was launched in early October 2014 and reached a following of thirty thousand within a few weeks. The site imagined a romance between the student leaders of the Umbrella Movement: Alex Chow Yong-kan (then twenty-four years old) and Lester Shum (twenty-one), who were at the time secretary-general and deputy secretary-general of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. The Facebook page was set up by a division of the Hong Kong BL fans as a “HeHe” (the male pronoun “he” said or written twice, pointing to love between two males and having nothing to do with evoking laughter)

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community specifically devoted to the Umbrella Movement and, as such, differentiated from the other BL communities. The main aim of the page’s founders was to brighten up the Umbrella Movement. Funuiology is another Hong Kong Facebook page that was launched during the Umbrella Movement but which turned away from prodemocracy activism after the movement ended. It is a community of sixteen thousand followers and has been reported on in the Hong Kong news, including in Orange News and HK OCC News.10 The founders are two university students who established this page as a “small corner” for BL fans to gather since they believed that Hong Kong fans were generally not as “happy” as those in Taiwan and mainland China.11 They also believed that the Hong Kong fandom was “suffering” in comparison with the more mature Taiwanese and large-scale mainland fandoms. Funuiology is not just an online community but also an actual community of fans who have social gatherings and who speak out against the commercialization of BL media. They have a “creation team” of fans who produce content for a locally distributed print magazine and who organize social gatherings.12 The founders of Funuiology reposted “Alexter” material on the page between November 2014 and January 2015, while encouraging their fans to actively participate in demonstrations and also reminding them to register to vote in the elections. They also expressed that Alexter exemplified Hong Kong’s BL identity: “We Hong Kongers finally have our own local BL couple. That’s so wonderful.”13 Some of the Alexter imagery was explicitly antigovernment, while much of it depicted sappy stories of the imagined daily life of the student leader “couple.” As explained by administrators of this FB page: “We hope we can bring in some ordinariness and sweetness to balance the gloomy atmosphere within the Umbrella Movement.”14 In the post-Umbrella-Movement era, Funuiology kept up its political mission by circulating imagery of political couplings, for instance imagery about a romance between Beijing-loyalist and then president of the Legislative Council Jasper Tsang and the radical democracy activist and enfant terrible Leung Kwok-hung, nicknamed Longhair. These two legislators are known adversaries with a history of heated discussion in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, but they were reimagined by some BL fans as middle-aged gay men secretly in love. Other fans developed a fantasy of them as much younger in age, in classroom settings, a fantasy wherein Jasper is a good student and the class monitor while Longhair is indeed



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a bad student.15 The couple is generally imagined as a pair of teenagers or of young adults in their twenties. In terms of the erotic thrust between them, Jasper is set up as an overly serious person who falls into the position of bottom (yansu shou), while Longhair is a playboy who comes out on top (buliang gong). This coupling demonstrates well the fandom’s interest in lauding prodemocracy activists like Longhair, who manage to dominate members of the establishment camp such as Jasper Tsang. As stated by fans, there is nothing particularly fancy about these middle-aged politicians, but reimagining and eroticizing their political games and power relations is a turn-on: “There is nothing that that we cannot fantasize about. . . . BL fans have extraordinary skills, such as beautifying and fantasizing everything rotten.”16 Besides sprucing up the love lives of political leaders, Hong Kong fans invented and yearned for couplings based on Hong Kong microcelebrities and actors in TV soap operas. For instance, Wong Ka-wai and Dickson are famous hosts of the popular online TV show TVMost (Maoji dianshi). These hosts are known to satirize the programs and patriotic hosts at TVB, the dominant and pro-China TV station in Hong Kong. In one of Wong’s best-known performances, he satirized the controversial Hong Kong–China policy “One Belt One Road” (yidaiyilu) as “One Breast One Bra” (yidaiyilou), which has a similar pronunciation but a different and sexualized meaning. In Funuiology, fans picked up on the TV appearances of these hosts and cast them as lovers. In his TVMost performances, Wong Ka-wai is usually the harsher and more aggressive critic of political corruption, and here he is imagined as the top who always dominates the lightweight Dickson. Funuiology’s “extraordinary rotten imagination” was coupled with a pledge toward both prodemocracy activism and LGBTQI rights. Since its inception as an online community, the founders stated that BL fantasies have to match an engagement with actual political rights for sexual minorities, as in the following statement: “No matter in what kind of homosexual coupling you are in actual life, it is all indeed about a person’s legal right to love.”17 The founders also encouraged its fandom to attend LGBTQI pride parades as well as announce sexuality-related research projects and cultural events. It is also the case that within these activist-friendly BL Facebook pages, the depictions of gay sexual relations between characters were mostly erotically underdeveloped or kept chaste. They restricted themselves to “pure and sweet” (qingshui tianxiang) depictions of sex acts

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while censoring all graphic depictions of genitals and sexual intercourse. This was partially because fans did not intend to delve deeply into sexual activity, and at the same time, because of Facebook’s stringent censorship legislation, noted above.

The Gift of Sexually Explicit Media or “Meat Pics” (Rou Tu) One image from the Funuiology site shows the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, and Hong Kong’s then chief executive, C. Y. Leung, engaged in a passionate kiss, adorned with the slogan, “My god, help me to survive this deadly love.” This was not an original image but based on a well-known 1990s Berlin graffiti image on the Berlin Wall depicting political cooperation and/or bondage between Leonid Brezhnev, president of the U.S.S.R., and Erich Honecker, East Germany’s political leader. A Funuiology administrator comment on the Xi/C. Y. coupling reads as follows: “Oh god. This coupling is very heavy in taste. Could you accept something like that? Hehe! The earth is dangerous. It would be perfect if this couple could go back to Mars, sleep together and screw each other there!”18 This administrator seems to imply that if these specific leaders were coupled in a more sexually explicit manner, the result would be simply “unbearable” and it would indeed be better to “send them to Mars.” Unlike these Facebook communities that are devoted to satire and Hong Kong politics, other transnational sinophone Facebook pages that have a large Hong Kong following encouraged and fought for the circulation of sexually explicit media. Boysloveonly, for instance, is a Facebook page with eighty-two thousand followers that was established in 2015 by a transnational team of sinophone administrators who allow sexually explicit depictions on their page. In order to avoid Facebook censorship rules, however, people show nudity and intercourse from angles which obscure genitals, or they simply erase genitals by means of well-designed filters, which is also a common censorship practice in Japanese BL and Japanese pornographic products. Some of the most explicit pictures did not originate on Facebook but were reposted by the administrators from Tumblr and Twitter, which were then both more sex tolerant than Facebook. Boysloveonly takes a tolerant stance toward sexually explicit media, which it views as a form of erotic and sexual empowerment. Sometime around November 2016, a previously wellknown Facebook BL fan page, Fuguo, with eighty thousand members,



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was closed down after being reported for violating community standards, in spite of administrators trying to ban depictions of genitals. Some fans were furious and commented that this type of removal of an entire site was “blind” (mei zhang yanjing) and instigated by “malicious informants” (eyi jubao).19 After its closure, two administrators of Fuguo transferred all the content posted on the page to Boysloveonly and asserted their intention to persevere in fighting against Facebook censorship: “You can close down one Fuguo page, but there are still hundreds of thousands of BL fans. We will not give up. BL fans will never give up.”20 This statement was supported by its followers with over 1,600 likes and about 122 comments in favor of the administrators’ statement. Danmei Camp was a similar transnational sinophone Facebook page, which opened in November 2012 and had amassed fourteen thousand followers as of late 2016. On this page, the administrators defended sexually explicit depictions as an important aspect of BL entertainment. This site contained BL images containing nudity but also highly sexual postures and non-normative sexual behavior, such as BDSM, animal cosplay (fandom-related costume play), and group sex. Yet, once again, the portrayal of genitalia was discouraged, as it would be in direct breach of Facebook community standards. Danmei Camp also experienced a period of political upheaval during the Umbrella Movement as two of the Hong Kong administrators openly supported the movement, and even posted on the page, while visiting the protestors’ encampments, “We feel scared, but we will not leave because we are afraid that the police will shoot at the students. We are sleepy but we will not sleep because the Chinese Communist Party is destroying our city. We have to let the world see our blood and sorrow. Please don’t let the 1989 Movement re-occur. The soul of democracy is waking up!”21 There were fifty-four comments on this post and all showed support; it also received 735 likes. In another post, one of the administrators promised one hundred free BL pictures to anybody who would join the prodemocracy movement. Two days later, however, the administrator retracted her statement after being attacked by other fans. She apologized and stated that she would no longer use the BL page to pursue her political agenda. During the period of our study, BL fans generally complied with Facebook’s obscenity regulations but they also used hashtags to search for explicit images on other networks such as Twitter and Tumblr, the latter of which banned sexually explicit imagery completely in

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December 2018, after the end of this study. In order to examine how fans adapted their sexually explicit media across different sites, we looked at fan posts related to the popular anime Yuri!!! on Ice by using the hashtag #yurionice to compare images on Facebook with those posted on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. On Funuiology, fans and administrators posted many couplings of Yuri!!! on Ice characters, and yet the imagery was not hard core, with the most explicit imagery only showing naked couples. The administrators of Funuiology, however, did indicate that more explicit “meat pics” or “H pictures,” which could not be posted on Facebook, could be obtained in person at the manga and anime festivals that they were organizing in Hong Kong. On Boysloveonly, most of the sexually explicit pictures were reposted from Twitter, Tumblr, and Weibo. On Danmei Camp, the administrators were more proactive and discussed Facebook’s censorship mechanisms. For example, in one post, the administrator addressed the fandom as follows: “I am posting meat pictures now. Everyone come out to eat them ~ hope that I won’t be reported.”22 They also stated that they would send meat pics to the fans’ “inboxes” and that they could be traded at conventions. There was clearly an ongoing willingness to provide erotic relief to the community outside the boundaries of online social networks and their increasingly intrusive censorship mechanisms. Hong Kong BL fans have been making use of the social media network Facebook to circulate homoerotic imagery about their favorite characters and couplings. In this chapter, we have focused on a faction of the fandom whose postings are more socially engaged, using BL imagery to comment on Hong Kong’s democracy movement, on queer identity politics, as well as on the right to post and view sexually explicit media in the years surrounding the Umbrella Movement. The era of fandom’s “database animalism,” or the obsessive browsing and archiving of BL materials for a private type of titillation, has arguably paved the way for a different kind of engagement. These fans have shown themselves to be savvy in posting and debating politically and sexually sensitive materials. BL fans generally use BL fantasies to re-imagine the qualities of male bonding and leadership, to make fun of the political establishment, and to imagine young leaders as more fancy, otherworldly, queer, and empathic than they could be in actuality. The BL fans we studied fantasized about youth leaders to soothe a larger political



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crisis. Both the erotic and political BL fantasies expressed by these Hong Kong fans can be seen as a subdued type of political critique, offering a plea for an imagined society as an important goal of prodemocracy politics.

Notes 1. Ting Liu, “Conflicting Discourses on Boys’ Love and Subcultural Tactics in Mainland China and Hong Kong,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 20 (2009), http://intersections.anu.edu.au /issue20/liu.htm. 2. Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: Japanese Homoerotic Manga as Trans-National Taiwan Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 3 (2012). 3. Fran Martin, “Transnational Queer Sinophone Cultures,” in Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia, ed. Mark McLelland and Vera Mackie (London: Routledge, 2015), 41. 4.  In August 2014, the Chinese Communist Party ruled that in future years Hong Kong citizens would not be able to hold democratic elections for a chief executive even though this right had been promised to them. In September 2014, under the name “Umbrella Movement,” thousands of activists were coordinated by the “Occupy Central Movement,” and several student organizations occupied the streets to express defiance against this ruling. After the Umbrella Movement, some groups, under the name of localism, continue to fight for the preservation of the city’s autonomy, local identity, and culture. 5.  “BL rules everything and gayness unifies the world” was written on the main banner of the Facebook page for Danmei Camp when it was established on November 17, 2014. According to our talk with the administrators of this BL page, this slogan was created originally by Xiaomiao, the founder and also one of the administrators of this page. While the page was still active as of July 2017, when we were engaged in follow-up research, by the summer of 2020 the page had been deleted and, to date, we have not been able to ascertain whether it was taken down by the page’s administrators or possibly by Facebook for the kind of violations discussed in this chapter. 6. Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, trans. Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono (2001; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xvi.

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7. Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang, “Forbidden Love: Incest, Generational Conflict, and the Erotics of Power in Chinese BL Fiction,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 4, no. 1 (2013). 8.  The Facebook notion of community standards and its stringent censorship legislation can be found at https://www.facebook.com/community standards, accessed December 25, 2016. 9.  The Facebook page Alex Lester Hehe can be found at https://www .facebook.com/AlexLester4everLove, accessed February 25, 2017; Funuiology at https://www.facebook.com/funuiology, accessed February 25, 2017; and Boysloveonly at https://www.facebook.com/boysloveonly, accessed February 25, 2017. Danmei Camp was at https://www.facebook.com/耽美集中營bl-統 領世界基情一統天下-340498986047542/, accessed February 25, 2017. 10.  In the article in Orange News, the author interviewed the two founders of Funuiology, Stephanie and Connie, mainly about why and how they started this Hong Kong–specific BL Facebook page. See Songzi, “Zhuanfang xianggang funü manhuajia: Xihuan BL, sijie keyi henduoyuan,” Orange News, August 10, 2016, http://www.orangenews.hk/officelady/system /2016/08/09/010039215_01.shtml. In HK OCC News, there is a short interview with Stephanie and Connie from Funuiology about the terms “funü” and “funü culture” in Hong Kong: “Zhongyi ti HeHe nana aiqing, ‘funü’ tingguo meiyou?” HK OCC News, July 31, 2016, http://hk.on.cc/hk/bkn /cnt/news/20160731/bkn201607311137172490731_00822_001.html. 11.  This comment by the Funuiology founders was made in the introduction section of their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pg /funuiology/about/?ref=page_internal, accessed February 25, 2017. 12. This magazine can be bought online via the Facebook page of BL magazine at https://www.facebook.com/blank.blmagazine/, accessed March 7, 2016. 13. This comment, like all those that follow, was posted in Chinese. The comment was posted by the administrators of Funuiology on November 10, 2014, and can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com/funuiology /photos/a.541637889301081.1073741827.541617562636447/5416349126 34712/?type=3, accessed December 20, 2016. 14. This comment was posted by the administrators of Funuiology on November 28, 2014, and can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com /funuiology/photos/a.542440225887514.1073741829.541617562636447 /549259681872235/?type=3, accessed December 20, 2016. 15. BL videos about Jasper and Longhair edited by BL fans include Sankalahaha, “‘Changmao, Yuzi’—Zhengtan zhong tian hehe gushi



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‘yuanqu: laosi, laisi’ / sankala x jiayibingwu,” YouTube, March 6, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArrV2NQHQ4M; and Pingwanhou, “Changmao x Zeng Yucheng ‘Yuanfen. Jiushi he nin yiqi sai Shijian’ ‘Xiaxi’ Huang Yaoming MV,” YouTube, April 24, 2016, https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=gr5wubKrTOg&feature=youtu.be. 16.  These comments were posted by the administrators of Funuiology on November 23, 2014, and can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com /funuiology/photos/a.542440225887514.1073741829.541617562636447 /547227965408740/?type=3, accessed December 20, 2016. 17.  This comment was posted by the administrators of Funuiology on June 27, 2016, when the Supreme Court in the United States ruled that same-sex marriage must be recognized. It can be viewed at https://www .facebook.com/pg/funuiology/posts/?ref=page_internal, accessed Decem­­ ber 20, 2016. 18. This comment was posted by the administrators of Funuiology on November 24, 2014, and can be viewed at https://www.facebook.com /100most/photos/a.292832474177740.66479.273813022746352/5972019 10407460/?type=3&theater, accessed December 20, 2016. 19.  Those comments can be viewed under the post in Boysloveonly on December 4, 2016, at https://www.facebook.com/boysloveonly/photos /a.1661337237444022.1073741829.1615813268663086/1846456362265441 /?type=3, accessed December 20, 2016. 20.  The statement was made by Yao, the administrator of Boysloveonly, in her post on December 4, 2016, and can be viewed at Boysloveonly, dated December 4, 2016. 21.  It was posted by Xiaomiao, an administrator/founder of Danmei Camp, on September 28, 2014, and was available at https://www.facebook .com/340498986047542/photos/a.340521462711961.75623.34049898604 7542/660823620681742/?type=3, accessed December 20, 2016. 22. It was posted by Yanjingjun, an administrator of Danmei Camp, on May 6, 2015, and was available at https://www.facebook.com /340498986047542/photos/a.340521462711961.75623.340498986047542 /777284675702302/?type=3&theater, accessed December 20, 2016.

chapter 7

The Commercialization and Popularization of Boys Love in South Korea Jungmin Kwon

Female fandom of the depiction of male–male eroticism in dif­ ferent media has been seen in a negative light worldwide based on prejudice against homosexuality.1 For this reason, members of the boys love (BL) fan community have sometimes chosen to hide their desires. However, their passion for male–male sexual fantasy has not withered, and their fan-based activities have had both tangible and intangible cultural effects on BL culture in Japan, its country of origin, and elsewhere, as is demonstrated in this volume. Notwithstanding the stigma associated with BL fandom, its visibility in global popular cultures has been mounting in recent years. Not only are BL books and magazines easily found in commercial bookstores in Europe, for instance, but TV shows and films based on BL stories are also being produced in Asian media markets. In addition, female BL fans are increasingly represented in pop cultural content in diverse manners, while other demographic groups, such as gay men, are reported to enjoy BL texts.2 In recent years, the presence of male–male romantic stories has become increasingly robust in the South Korean (hereafter “Korean”) media market as well. While its history is shorter than that of BL fan culture in Japan, Korea’s longstanding fandom of male–male romance literature, stemming from Japanese popular culture, dates back to at least the late 1980s. However, it was not until the early to mid-2000s that the subculture became visible in the Korean public sphere. Several factors contributed to this visibility, such as the development of digital media technology, the release of the megahit The King and the Clown 80



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(Wangŭi namcha, 2005), an arguably “gay” film, the coming out of celebrities as either gay or transgender, and the elimination of the discriminatory content clause in the Youth Protection Act, which had banned homosexual content in any media form. These events created an environment in which the production, circulation, and consumption of BL content were less discouraged. Since that time, BL content, regardless of whether it has been either welcomed, embraced, or scorned, has expanded across a variety of media in the Korean cultural market and influenced mainstream culture in diverse ways. This chapter aims to offer an overview of this entire process, in other words, to explore the ways in which BL culture emerged, was marginalized, and—in the 2010s—became a popular media commodity in Korea. It begins with the history of BL fandom by examining local BL content, such as BL webtoons (wept’un, online comics), BL novels, and fan fiction (fanfic), including works which illustrate erotic romance between real-life celebrities, such as K-pop singers. It also investigates the recent popularization of BL content, particularly novels, in the online publishing market, with a focus on its incorporation into a commercial capital system. Lastly, it offers an in-depth interview with an active BL author to both provide an industry perspective and to fully contextualize the establishment of male–male love stories as a genre in the Korean publishing industry. The interview suggests that capitalizing on fan cultures has caused several hidden problems, including the low-paid labor of BL creators and a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in the online platform market.

The History of BL in Korea Many labels have been given to male–male romantic narratives that have been either imported from Japan or created in Korea. Among a range of labels used in Korean since the introduction of the genre, BL, yaoi, and fanfic (p’aenp’ik) are most frequently used to refer to either fanauthored works that “couple” (k’ŏp’ŭl) two media characters or real-life celebrities or commercially produced texts about male–male love. Until the mid-2000s, the term “yaoi” was more prevalent, perhaps because it has a longer history within the fandom of male–male romance in Korea, which was heavily influenced by its presence in Japan, where yaoi was the dominant term until the early to mid-2000s.3 However, some authors of the genre and some readers have increasingly refused to use the term

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yaoi because they consider it a self-hating designation. Accordingly, BL has become more commonly employed as an umbrella term to broadly indicate media content about male–male romantic stories. Park Sung-hee classified the history of BL culture in Korea into four stages: the birth of BL in Japan in the 1970s and its introduction to Korea in the 1980s; the establishment of the genre and the creation of its subculture in the 1990s; the popularity of both Korean and Japanese BL in the 2000s; and the expansion of Korean-produced BL in the 2010s.4 In the 1980s, Korean manga readers encountered male–male love manga from Japan. Notably, a pirated version of Ozaki Minami’s Zetsuai (Desperate love, 1989) garnered tremendous popularity among Korean fans. Fans of the BL genre formed tonginkye (comic book clubs) and published tonginchi (sometimes Romanized as donginji; fan-­produced magazines, from the Japanese term dōjinshi).5 While these terms are not exclusive to BL fan culture in Korea, in the late 1980s, when the amateur production of BL took off in Korea, BL fans were more active than fans of other genres of manhwa (comics) to the extent that the terms tonginkye and tonginchi are in many cases still perceived by comic authors and readers to refer to BL culture specifically. The 1990s was arguably the most important era in the history of Korean BL culture, and scholars have posited several factors that influenced its establishment in the country.6 For example, the development of dial-up Internet service significantly contributed to the distribution of Japanese and local BL texts and the formation of BL communities. The invigoration of such communities triggered the birth of the first commercial Korean BL manhwa—Has Spring Come to Mr. Lewis? (Luisŭssieke pomŭn wassnŭnka?, 1990)7—by Yi Chŏng-ae.8 However, the decade also saw the enactment of the Youth Protection Act, greatly endangering the Korean manhwa market, including BL. The act was legislated in 1997 to strengthen punishment for anything that was deemed to create a harmful environment; it classified media content depicting homosexuality positively as harmful and restricted both online and offline BL works.9 Yi’s texts received several warnings and were suspended from publication.10 In addition, the Act on the Protection of Personal Information and the Establishment of Sound Order of Information and Communication was created to protect youths from harmful information on the Internet. This act, which aimed to bar youths from accessing harmful content, including information about homosexuality, took effect in 2000 and was a huge shock for online BL writers and readers.



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Female high school students, who were the primary producers and consumers of BL content, held a protest rally against the decision; they demanded that the government acknowledge BL as a literary genre and expunge literature that depicted homosexuality from the list of harmful media.11 This period of harsh antihomosexual regulation saw the establishment of Comic World, an event sponsored by a Japanese company and first held in 1999. Comic World contributed to a revitalization of BL tongin culture by offering a space in which BL authors could sell their derivative noncommercial works and BL fans could celebrate their culture together. In 2004, in response to the advice of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, homosexuality was deleted from the list of harmful media content in the Youth Protection Act. The following year the groundbreaking BL manhwa series Peak (Jhŏlchŏng, 2005), by Yi Yŏng-hŭi, debuted in Wink, a manhwa magazine targeting young women. Kim Jongeun has argued that this work was faithful to aspects of typical Japanese BL, such as dichotomized gong/su (Japanese: seme/uke, i.e., top/bottom) patterns and overly graphic scenes, and this tendency distinguished 2000s BL content from earlier Korean BL due to the presence of more realistic characters and narratives in the earlier works.12 Yu Hachin’s Perfectly Captivated (Wanchŏnmukyŏlhake salochaphita) in 2006 also followed the newer BL formula and drew great attention from readers. However, this work was a webtoon on eComix, an online manhwa platform. The success of Yu’s work led eComix to include more BL content.13 Henceforth, an increasing number of BL texts were published online. Thus, the rapid development of Internet technology enabled increasing BL content in the digital manhwa space. By 2010, the status of BL culture in the publishing industry had become more solidified. This is well illustrated by a plagiarism incident involving a BL novel by Yi Chŏng-ae. After announcing the end of her writing career due to harsh censorship in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Yi had continued to share her work under the pen name Ssoni in several underground BL communities. Writer Mun Chŏng took the basic narrative of Yi’s BL romance The Dead of Winter, which she self-published during this period, and changed the primary gay relationship into a heterosexual one. After being published under the title Vertigo (Hyŏnkichŭng, 2010), Mun’s book became a commercial success. Yi launched a lawsuit against Mun, which, after several years and multiple appeals, led to a judgment in favor of Yi. The judgment was welcomed by many BL

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authors in that the copyright of authors of tongin texts, which are not commercially published, was officially acknowledged. BL development in the 2010s will be further explored in the following section.

BL Claiming Space within the Web’s Literary World The aforementioned regulations notwithstanding, the commercialization of BL texts and fandom in Korea is not a new occurrence in the history of Korean BL. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, some romantic comic magazines made contracts with tongin writers to publish their work, and BL anthologies were occasionally printed by mainstream publishers. These successfully avoided governmental surveillance, which was gradually abating. Above all, Park Sejeong considers the aforementioned Comic World event “a catalyst for the accelerated cooptation of BL tongin culture.”14 The festival is full of sales booths for derivative works and goods that attract cosplayers and fans/buyers. According to Park, despite some resistance against the capitalization of amateur tongin culture, the market was able to provide opportunities to revitalize the subculture.15 Comic World truly played a role in stimulating the then half-dead BL culture by allowing members of the online BL community to meet in person and witness the subculture’s energy. Comic World holds the title of the largest, most popular, and longest-lasting Korean comics convention. Since the 2010s, in response to increasing demand, other tongin festivals, such as D. Festa (previously Dong-Ne Festa), Cakesquare, and BookCoFe (BookPal Comics Festival), have begun targeting this niche market. As noted earlier, the Internet significantly contributed to the popularization of BL. After Yu Hachin’s success in 2006, webtoon and web novel sites scrambled to serialize BL content, and a variety of platforms for BL emerged. Webtoon specialty sites, such as Lezhin Comics, Toptoon, Justoon, Peanutoon, and Bomtoon, and web fiction sites, such as Joara, BookPal Websosŏl, and Romantique, started listing BL as a genre. Now, most of these sites locate the link to BL products in their top menu, which attests to the popularity of the genre among digital readers. In 2015, a BL-specific platform named Mandoo Comics opened, although it closed in 2017 for unspecified reasons. Many of the general sites provide mobile applications so that consumers can access content, including BL, anytime and anywhere, and most of them maintain a paid service. Before these sites emerged and began



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charging for access to either some or all of their content, web content had been perceived as free digital items in the gift economy, resulting in significant skepticism about the new paid-service model. However, according to Park Sung-hee, Lezhin Comics helped the paid-service model become established by taking advantage of adult comics, which manhwa readers were willing to pay for due to the genre’s scarcity elsewhere.16 Park argues that the webtoon company observed the rising demand for adult content on mobile devices, particularly by women who had already cultivated a taste for BL texts and were willing to purchase them. Accordingly, the website increased the amount of BL webtoons that were available for the female consumer groups, who proved to be extremely devoted to their platform. This strategy was successful and was followed by other BL comic and fiction platforms. Hence, BL is now not only located in the top menu but constitutes 30 to 60 percent of all content on well-known web literature sites, including the leading company, Lezhin, making it the most consumed digital literary genre.17 To hire new authors to meet the market demand, some platforms hold BL contests. For instance, Bomtoon and BookPal have held regular competitions for BL comics and fiction and have awarded 5 million to 10 million won (4,200 to 8,300 US dollars) to the winners, along with opportunities to publish their works on the platforms. By using these contests, the digital marketplaces train new BL creators, boost BL production, and improve accessibility to a genre that had to veil itself two decades ago. Additionally, giant portal sites, including Naver and Daum, have increased the volume of webtoons and fiction they offer and launched services for amateur creators, including “Challenging a Cartoonist” (Tochŏn manhwa) for webtoons and “Challenge League” (Ch’aellinchi likŭ) for fiction on Naver, and “I Am a Cartoonist” (Nato manhwaka; later revamped to “Webtoon League”) for webtoons on Daum. Amateurs upload their original pieces and have an opportunity to sign a contract with the portals if their works either receive high ratings from readers or win in the league. While, as they are targeting a very specific adult market, namely, BL fans, their works will not be highly successful in the competitions, many amateur BL authors make their debuts there first and try to gain enough audience attention to get picked up by BL-oriented platforms that are eager to find BL authors.18 As a result, BL authors have more options to publish their works than when they

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had to either serialize with romantic comic magazines or publish their works as tonginchi. This boom in digital marketplaces for BL media has boosted the number of BL authors and texts.19 Digital marketplaces are truly benefitting producers by offering more chances to commodify their work and benefitting consumers by delivering a variety of content. However, a few worries have arisen over the commercialization of tongin culture. First, before the emergence of online market, the BL culture relied on a community-based cottage system in which BL authors and fans worked together to produce and circulate books and magazines without leaning on commercialization. Some lament that a capitalist system is replacing such intimate relationships and care between authors and fans. Another downside of capitalization is fierce competition. BL writers may choose to include overly graphic and provocative content simply to garner greater attention from readers on e-platforms. In addition, a BL writer with whom I conversed noted that, regarding digitization and commercialization of the BL world, the labor of BL authors and the concentration of BL resources are in the hands of a few. This will be explored further via an interview with that writer in the following section.

Behind the Capital-Driven BL Market I was introduced to an individual I will call “Yoon” via an academic acquaintance, and I interviewed her in August 2018. Yoon went to one of the top schools in Korea for her master’s and doctoral degrees, is working at a good company, and, significantly, does not conceal her identity as a BL producer. Yoon started consuming BL texts as a fanfic reader in her third year of elementary school. She occasionally posted her own works on the fan online community about her favorite boyband during high school and received positive reviews, which led her to believe that she was “not bad as an amateur writer.” In college, after taking a short hiatus due to her busy campus life, she returned to her fanfic writing about a boyband called TVXQ, and she soon became a wellknown author in the BL fanfic community. Upon her own fans’ request, Yoon even collected her fanfic and printed it in bound volumes, which she sold directly to her readers via post. When Yoon mailed her books, some of her fans voluntarily helped with the shipping, for which she was extremely grateful. This clearly demonstrates the close relationship between BL writers and readers in the 2000s. Interestingly, according to



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BL fans, such a relationship is now harder to establish due to the commercialization of tongin culture.20 After Yoon entered graduate school in the early 2010s, her writing career was not as active as before. She occasionally began writing short pieces for BL anthologies. Although she did not write much herself, she witnessed how the BL market was growing, both domestically and globally, and becoming visible in mainstream cultural spaces. It was the Chinese web drama Addicted (Shangyin 2016; discussed by Xi Lin in this volume), which was unofficially translated into Korean and circulated by fans as Sangŭn, that motivated her active engagement in writing BL. The drama was immensely popular in East Asia and contributed to the expansion of BL fandom in the region. Yoon coupled two male protagonists from the show in fanfic she shared with the BL community. Its popularity helped her regain confidence as a writer. During that time, many platforms for webtoons and web fiction emerged, but companies were struggling to find good BL authors. The head of one platform expressed to Yoon that they wanted good BL authors because the BL market had considerable potential based on the interest and purchasing power of women in their twenties and thirties. As suggested by the fierce competition among BL writers that I noted in the previous section, there are a good many aspiring BL writers, but, as Yoon clarified with me, most lack the experience and ability to write sixty episodes of a serial work, the minimum number that platforms require. Additionally, many new writers quickly realize that attracting an audience’s attention and earning a decent income are extremely difficult. This signifies the imbalance between the dream and the reality of BL authors and accordingly between the supply and the demand of BL content. Yoon did manage to debut as a commercial BL writer in 2017. Her episodes were favorably received and topped other BL novels on the platform. After that success, she migrated to another platform for better contract terms, under which she is currently writing a second BL novel. Over the course of our two-hour conversation, Yoon intermittently mentioned the conditions under which BL novelists work. Many novice writers, excited to get the opportunity to debut as professional writers, do not read contracts carefully before signing. For example, Yoon was later surprised to learn that at the first platform she wrote for she would not receive a per-page fee until after she submitted thirty episodes. In addition, while she was supposed to receive a commission when readers paid for access to her novel, there was a big catch. Upon completion

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of the first thirty episodes, she was paid an advance for the remaining thirty. Under the terms of her contract, she was not entitled to that commission until the advance was paid off via reader access fees. That is, only after a platform has earned the amount advanced to the author will it pay out pay-per-view profits to authors. Unfortunately, it is not easy for BL fiction to meet that critical point with a reading charge of approximately 0.1 US dollars per episode. Therefore, the commercialized system is not always a good revenue model for BL creators. Consequently, as stated previously, many BL writers struggle with their debut piece and give up writing for web novel platforms. Ultimately, the rich-get-richer paradigm applies to the current profit system for BL content in two ways. First, although an author will own the copyright to their original work, the franchise license belongs to the platform on which it is published. Thus, secondary returns from that work are minimal. Moreover, few of the platforms, such as Lezhin and KakaoPage, and web portals, including Naver and Daum, have the resources to generate ample revenue for authors. Other platforms do not have enough readers who are willing to use paid services. Therefore, writers flock to big companies seeking readers, and readers do the same when seeking more stories. Thus, this discouraging cycle for authors and smaller enterprises has added to the concentration of resources in major platform players. Yoon is deeply aware of this and takes a critical stance on the monopolization of large platforms. However, she is still optimistic. For two decades, Yoon has observed the rapid growth of both the local and the global BL markets as well as the power of capitalization more generally. She believes that fiction is not as lucrative as webtoons, but platform companies continue to work on digital novels, believing that they can make a profit by turning web novels into webtoons and eventually into either TV/web dramas or films. This is already happening with straight romance novels. The wildly popular TV drama What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim (Kimpisŏka wae kŭlŏlkka? 2018) is an adaptation of a webtoon (2016) based on a web novel (2013), both of the same name. Yoon believes that the same is highly likely to happen to BL web fiction, and she expects her work to be made into either a TV drama or a film at some point: “Every novelist dreams of having their work visualized.” To promote the transformation of web novels into audiovisual media, many platforms and portal sites that serialize web novels and web­ toons match capable web novelists with webtoonists to produce quality



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products that can be visualized and/or exported to other countries. Indeed, Yoon’s novel was offered a publication deal in the Chinese market, which she did not take. Regarding the commodification of BL culture, Yoon said, “I don’t think it’s bad, but I know there are some authors who wouldn’t want it.” While she has heard that there are BL writers who feel negatively about the popularization of BL content, she has not personally encountered any negative comments from them. Notably, Park Sejeong interviewed BL writers and goods sellers, writing that they “view commercialization as a new negotiation subject, not as a restraint of their subcultural behaviors, and [they] expand their subcultural communities through markets and secure markets through communities.”21 This finding, as well as the perspective that Yoon expressed toward the marketization of BL culture, suggests that the monetization of BL can be positively understood as a potential opportunity for members of the BL community. Thus, Yoon explained that she believes the following: BL is a literary genre . . . for sure, its market will be getting strongly revitalized because authors can approach more audiences [through the market system]. If they can get by with it, isn’t it a good thing? Everyone deserves a financial return for their labor. They had to be hidden, but society is changing in a way that they are confident of what they are doing, and they can live by creating BL content. Far in the future, BL could even become a film genre. To be sure, Yoon’s perspective is not generalizable to all other BL creators, but her case informs us of one aspect of how BL commercialization in the Korean online publishing market and Korean BL novelists are influencing each other, including where the dynamic relationship is leading BL cultures in Korea. Japan, where BL originated, has already seen the popularization of BL as a highly successful media genre, and BL fans in that country enjoy a diversity of BL commodities in the media market. The Korean BL market is in the early stages of being incorporated into the media market, and media businesses and writers are experiencing growing pains. However, based on widespread mobile device use in the country, through which young fans consume online BL content, the commercialization of BL

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in Korea is fast growing and following a different pattern from that of Japan. Perhaps, as in Japan, the status of BL as a literary genre will be more solidified in the Korean media market, and BL artists and fans will openly disclose their identities. However, as we have seen here, some concerns have arisen regarding the establishment and popularization of the BL genre in the marketplace, including low wages and poor working conditions for BL authors and the mounting oligopoly of large corporate actors over the BL web economy, from which new ethical problems, beyond those discussed above, may ensue. For instance, youth readers can easily access adult BL by using their parents’ accounts or identification. In addition, the glamorization of male–male love stories can cause some gay readers discomfort due to a gap between the fantasy world and their real lives.22 As BL culture spreads and increasingly influences popular culture consumers, the downsides of commercialization and the wide distribution of the BL genre should be discussed both in the BL community and in the marketplace.

Notes  1.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae changlŭ sŏngin manhwaŭi kuknae yuip mich’ changlŭ t’ŭkhwa yŏnku” (M.A. thesis, Sejong University, 2017). 2. Thomas Baudinette, “Japanese Gay Men’s Attitudes Towards ‘Gay Manga’ and the Problem of Genre,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 3, no. 1 (2017); Kim Hyojin, “Huchyosinŭn malhal su issnŭnka: Yŏcha’ ot’ak’uŭi palkyŏn,” Ilpon yŏnku, no. 45 (September 30, 2010). 3.  For example, Park Sejeong interviewed fifteen BL creators in 2005. In the interview excerpts, all of the interviewees use yaoi to indicate BL genre. See Park Sejeong, “Sŏngchŏk hwansangŭlosŏŭi yaoiwa yŏsŏngŭi mun­hwa nŭnglyŏke kwanhan yŏnku” (Master’s thesis, Ewha Womans University, 2005). 4.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae.” 5.  In terms of Romanization of tonginkye and tonginchi, readers may find dongingye and donginji more familiar. Tonginkye and tonginchi are used here since this chapter follows the McCune-Reischauer system. 6. Kim Jongeun, “Hankuk tongsŏngae manhwaŭi changlŭ t’ŭksŏng yŏn­ku: P’eminichŭmchŏk kwanchŏmŭl chungsimŭlo” (M.A. thesis, Sejong University, 2013), 266. 7.  It was first serialized in the manhwa (manga) magazine Lŭnesangsŭ (Renaissance) in 1990. In 1994, the publisher Eisŭmunhwasa published it in book form.



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8.  Kim Jongeun, “Hankuk tongsŏngae,” 266. 9. Jungmin Kwon, Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2019). 10. Kim Jongeun, “Hankuk tongsŏngae,” 23; Kim Hyojin, “Hankuk tongin munhwawa yaoi: 1990-nyŏntaelŭl chungsimŭlo,” Manhwaaenimeisyŏn yŏn-ku, no. 30 (2013): 281. 11. Kwon, Straight Korean Female Fans. 12.  Kim Jongeun, “Hankuk tongsŏngae.” 13.  Kim Jongeun, “Hankuk tongsŏngae,” 34. 14.  Park Sejeong, “Sŏngchŏk hwansangŭlosŏŭi yaoiwa,” 77. 15.  Park Sejeong, “Sŏngchŏk hwansangŭlosŏŭi yaoiwa,” 68. 16.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae,” 54. 17.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae,” 54. 18.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae,” 66. 19.  Park Sung-hee, “Namsŏng tongsŏngae,” 58. 20.  Park Sejeong, “Sŏngchŏk hwansangŭlosŏŭi yaoiwa,” 63, 76. 21.  Park Sejeong, “Sŏngchŏk hwansangŭlosŏŭi yaoiwa,” 76. 22.  Regarding gay male reactions to BL texts in the context of Korea, see Kwon, Straight Korean Female Fans.

chapter 8

Rethinking the Meaning of Boys Love in an Era of Feminism Online Discourse on “Leaving BL” in Late 2010s Korea Hyojin Kim

Boys love (BL) as a women’s genre has enjoyed a strong following in Korea since the 1990s. While a few local amateur artists were influenced by Japanese fanzines (dōjinshi) in the 1980s, it was not until the 1990s that BL, then called yaoi in both Japan and Korea, began to become popular among young women. Early on, most popular BL works were by Japanese artists, but by the mid-1990s, Korean professional and amateur artists started to create their own BL works, part of the history of BL in Korea mapped out in this volume by Jungmin Kwon. At roughly thirty years old, BL as a field of women’s contemporary practice in Korea involves the creation and consumption of manhwa (comics), novels, drama CDs, and other forms of fan fiction. In the most recent decade, specifically since August 2018, there have been frequent and intense discussions about “t’albiel” or, alternatively, “t’alBL,” namely, “leaving BL,” across Korean social media (especially on Twitter).1 In this context, leaving BL literally means to “escape from BL” or “abandon BL.” This “escape” involves recognizing the various problems within the genre, which, its proponents believe, should lead to disengaging from the creation and consumption of BL entirely. In this regard, if, in 2019 one searches for “t’albiel” or “t’alBL” (with or without a hashtag) on Twitter, one can find many tweets discussing the necessity for Korean women to “leave BL.” In February 2019 for instance, a sincedeleted account, P’eminijŭm Ch’onggonggye (Feminism All-Out Attack Account @e_femi_tyu337), posted 92



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BL is misogyny itself BL doesn’t help improve women’s rights[.] It is not far from a real crime given its content involving gang rape and sexual crime, and men even disguise BL as bromance [in order to market them to general audience.] If we consider women’s rights seriously . . . we should make BL extinct. . . . #LeavingBL #BLisMisogyny #BLextinct2 On the other hand, it is also possible to observe within this discourse many tweets in support of BL. Intriguingly, feminist concerns form an intrinsic part of the debate over leaving BL among both those for and those against the genre. Among other things, for its detractors, BL is problematic as it reflects the misogyny of the real world. However, for its supporters, BL remains virtually the only field within the male-dominated realm of popular culture in which women play a leading role as both creators and consumers. Another important characteristic the two sides have in common is that both the pro- and anti-BL parties are presumed to be familiar with the genre and the realm of its fandom. In this respect, proponents of leaving BL are distinct from the traditional opponents of BL, whose antagonism toward the genre is often based on their conservative religious beliefs, homophobic prejudice, and various taboos against the expression of women’s sexuality, which are all deeply rooted in Korean society. Very much to the contrary, most supporters of leaving BL who have emerged across social media were once fans of BL but now criticize the genre from an insider’s point of view. Moreover, the majority are self-identified feminist women in their teens and twenties who have been heavily influenced by the recent rise of feminist discourses in Korea. Given this situation, we might ask why young women who were themselves once BL fans have come to criticize BL as an obstacle to feminist progress and, further, to argue that all women should abandon the genre entirely? What is the difference between their feminist critiques of BL and those made by patriarchal religious conservatives based on homophobia and patriarchal attitudes about women’s sexuality? Finally, what can we learn from the debates that criticize BL from a “feminist” point of view, and what might the implications of these debates be for the future of the genre? To answer these questions, in this chapter I trace the trajectory of the leaving-BL movement, focusing on two cultural phenomena: (1) the publication of crowd-funded tonginchi (fanzines, the Korean

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pronunciation of the Japanese term dōjinshi)3 that have served to stimulate self-reflection on the part of the hujoshi (Korean BL fans, the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese term fujoshi, literally meaning “rotten girls/women”); and (2) the so-called “feminism reboot” (p’eminichŭm ribut’ŭ), that is, the emergence of feminism as a concern for many young Korean women since the mid-2010s.4 I then classify the movement’s logics into three critiques: first, that the genre paints disgusting gay men and gay sex in an unrealistically beautiful light; second, that it replicates patriarchal male–female power dynamics; and third, that it marginalizes or excludes female characters. Finally, I attempt to shed light on the significance of the leaving-BL movement for the future of the BL genre.

Contextualizing Leaving BL: Hujoshi Self-Reflection and the “Feminism Reboot” in the Mid-2010s As noted above, in the early 1990s Korea BL became popular among young people, especially women in their teens and twenties. Thanks to a variety of cultural liberalization policies in the 1990s—including the opening of oversea travel and the abolition of strict censorship on publishing by the military government—the Korean comics market expanded significantly, entailing both an influx of Japanese comics and an increase in the publication of Korean comics by both professional and amateur artists. This was especially true in the genre of girls’ comics (sunjeong manhwa). The explosion of the K-pop industry and the rise of idol culture in this decade also contributed to a flourishing of amateur BL manhwa depicting idols in same-sex relationships and to the popularization and circulation of idol fan fiction online.5 While the younger generation of women and adolescent girls embraced this trend, mainstream society in the 1990s generally pathologized BL, claiming, for instance, that the popularity of BL was the result of the harmful influence of Japanese popular culture, and that the unchecked popularity of the genre would make young Korean women immoral. Moreover, BL faced strong criticism from conservative Christian commentators, since BL graphically represents homosexual romance and sexuality. In fact, it was only in 2004 that “homosexuality” (tongsŏngae) was deleted from the list of harmful media content banned by the Youth Protection Act, and thus Christian calls for censorship of these representations of homosexuality were in keeping with contemporary statutes, to say nothing of the social mores of the time.



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This conservative cultural background helped bring about an unofficial alliance between Korean BL fans—at the time called “tonginnyŏ,” that is, women (nyŏ) who make tonginchi—and gay filmmakers in the mid-2000s. A number of films depicting male homosexuality in Korea, including some in historical settings, most notably The King and the Clown (Wangŭi namcha, 2005), became huge hits, while independent gay movies such as No Regret (Huhoehaji ana, 2006) and Road Movie (Rodŭ mubi, 2002) created by gay directors attracted significant attention. Several critics pointed out that the success of these films was due to enthusiastic female fans who repeatedly watched and actively supported them,6 paralleling a similar phenomenon in mainstream media in Japan in the 1990s.7 Also, a tonginchi or tongin (fan-creator) culture developed in the 2000s, concurrent with the spread of high-speed Internet access and an increase in related fan events, such as Comic World (K’omigwŏltŭ), Third Place (Sŏdŭp’ŭlleisŭ), and small-scale “only events” (ollijŏn), the latter a type of event featuring fan works based on a single original work or even a single “coupling” (k’ŏp’ŭlling, a Korean term for what English-speaking fans call “shipping”). In Japan, this period saw a boom in popular and academic discourse on otaku and fujoshi culture, which concurrently influenced Korea, as a number of books on these topics were translated into Korean around 2010. It was in this context that a series of high-quality tonginchi-style anthologies on hujoshi published by hujoshi themselves and financed by crowd funding began to offer key frameworks supporting the leavingBL movement.8 Among these, Metahujo is the most significant for this discussion, as its emphasis on hujoshi self-reflection can be credited as presaging the blossoming of the leaving-BL movement.9 Metahujo is an anthology containing twelve essays covering a variety of themes ranging from hujoshi life and identity to reviews of BL works. The editor, Totomeri, defines “meta-hujoshi” as “hujoshi who know how to criticize other hujoshi and what they do in detail from a perspective of self-reflection, while remaining conscious of the whole structure of the BL culture.”10 There are two primary dimensions this self-reflection assumes. First, not only is BL intrinsically intertwined with homophobia, but also, from a feminist perspective, BL is problematic in that its women authors generally tend to deploy patriarchal male representations in constructing their narratives and imagery. For example, regarding homophobia, in an essay titled “Hujoshi’s Original Sin—Why Should Hujoshi Get to Know Real Homo [sic],” Yorisaan

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points out that “Yaoi [i.e., BL] is content that exploits images of gay men and the social pressure they experience for the enjoyment of those who are themselves not the party concerned [tangsaja; i.e., gay men]. In other words, [this imagery is produced simply to satisfy] women’s desire.”11 The second point forms perhaps the main argument of Metahujo, not least as expressed in Totomeri’s opening notes. As she states, “We cannot avoid the question of why we desire to realize our dream of gender swapping and merely criticize symbolic power from the position of voyeurs? [Why do we dream of] wearing male skin [in BL]? Because the self-identity of a hujoshi is satisfied to remain in a background position, [while] our self-identity as feminists compels us to affirm ourselves as women and drives us to confront the world. [These contradictions] are meant to clash.”12 Here, we can notice that among the two dimensions of hujoshi’s self-reflection, the leaving-BL argument has from the outset primarily emphasized the problem with acquiescence to the patriarchy via escape into BL fantasies, contending that feminist identity and hujoshi identity are mutually incompatible and ultimately in conflict. In addition to these fan-driven critiques, the academic evaluation of the meaning of BL in Korea has changed in parallel with the populist surge of feminist activism and criticism since the mid-2010s.13 In a 2015 article, feminist film critic Sohn Hee Jeong, points out the need to approach BL critically because hujoshi tend to remain as only consumers of male-centered popular culture contents in spite of the liberating aspects of BL. She criticizes BL for its tendency to merely enlarge the market for movies with narratives based on male homosocial ties, and she questions whether BL has led to a fundamental change in women’s lives or their critical selfawareness.14 Sohn’s critical evaluation of BL seems to have influenced the formation of the leaving-BL movement to some extent, inasmuch as the relationship between feminism and BL, once considered mutually inclusive, has more recently become controversial in Korea.

Three Types of Critiques behind Leaving BL As noted above, there are three types of critiques shaping leaving-BL discourse as of early to mid-2019, critiques which I explore in this section: (1) a homophobic critique that the genre offers an unrealistically beautiful depiction of “real” gay men and gay sex; (2) a feminist critique that the relationships between the gong and su (in Japanese, seme and uke; loosely, top and bottom) characters mirror the unequal power relations



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between men and women; and (3) a second feminist critique that female characters are marginalized in or excluded entirely from most BL works.

1. Leaving BL based on a homophobic stance against “real gay” This critique accuses BL of idealizing gay men and gay sex, the primary argument being that BL serves to disguise the fact that most “real gays” (hyŏnshil gei) are ugly and have unclean, unhygienic (anal) sex. This perspective also emphasizes the notion that misogyny is inherent in gay culture as further justification. In other words, lines of argument in this vein hold that BL brainwashes women into idealizing gay men and gay culture, which is itself misogynistic, for which reason women should leave BL. Such critiques are sometimes illustrated graphically, including in illustrations circulating online on Twitter and elsewhere. For instance, the unsigned image in figure 8.1 contrasts an image of two idealized beautiful boys together and their romantic love typical of BL (above)

Figure 8.1. Image circulating on social media contrasting gay sex in BL and gay sex in “reality.”

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with a “real gay” couple (below) who are enjoying anal sex, with, as noted in the illustration itself, the submissive partner additionally suffering from gynecomastia. Another widely circulating image specifically derides anal sex by way of a crude drawing of a penis entering a rectum being greeted by a smiling piece of feces, asking in English “Hi wat are u doing? [sic].” This use of English suggests that its origin may be Western or perhaps conservative Christian social media. Many tweets on leaving BL attach these and similar illustrations in order to persuade readers to leave BL.15 It is well-known that mainstream Korean society is quite conservative regarding LGBT rights and women’s sexuality, stemming from both the deep-rooted cultural influence of Confucianism and the country’s large Christian population. Despite this, the hujoshi community of readers and writers in Korea has enthusiastically and relatively openly supported the BL genre. As noted above, this enthusiasm has extended to supporting various movies in the 2000s created by gay directors and sympathetically portraying gay culture. This brief alliance between gay activists, including filmmakers, and hujoshi, if we can call it that,16 collapsed in the mid-2010s, following the rise of so-called “radical feminism,” which has emphasized a feminist separatism from other minority activism and which has become increasingly influential among hujoshi across social media forums. The argument propagated within this discourse holds that feminists should be concerned only with “biological” women, and it withholds support for other sexual and social minorities, such as gay men, transgender people (especially transwomen), and disabled men. For such radical feminists in Korea, gay men and transwomen are perceived as harmful, serving to hinder the development of women’s rights. This disdain stems from the fact that gay Korean men, central to the present debate over BL, are perceived to remain fundamentally “Korean men” and, as such, inherently privileged in patriarchal Korean society. It is also influenced by the perception that despite this privilege, gay men have attempted to obtain a “free ride” within the Korean feminist movement, exploiting their social positioning as a sexual minority.17 This kind of argument has emerged and risen to prominence in Korean feminist discourse over the last several years, something in stark contrast to recent decades, which have seen generally close ties between Korean feminism and the LGBT community. Therefore, this “feminist” condemnation of gay men can be considered as a new phenomenon, and



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one that shows how young feminists, schooled through online forums and social media, differ from previous generations. Indeed, members of this younger generation who call themselves “radical feminists” severely criticize their feminist antecedents for collectively emphasizing the problems of other sexual and gender minorities at the presumed cost of ignoring the pain and voices of women. Such contemporary “radical feminists” active in online communities often attempt to ignite women’s anger against gay men by circulating misogynistic posts recovered from gay online forums.18 Thus, in stark contrast with the Japanese discourse within the socalled “yaoi debate” of the 1990s that problematized BL as the sexual objectification and exploitation of gay men by women, this specifically Korean thread of discourse criticizes BL as sympathetically idealizing and glorifying gay men, ignoring the ugly “truth” about male homosexual activity.19 And, while absurd and irrational, this line of thought appeals to many women who are accustomed to the deep-rooted homophobia pervasive in conservative Korean society.

2. Leaving BL because the gong–su relationship mimics the unequal power relations between men and women The second type of leaving-BL argument concentrates on unequal power relations represented by the gong (from the Japanese word seme, indicating the penetrating party) and the su (uke, the penetrated) characters, arguing that the couplings depicted in BL merely reinforce the persistence of inequality between males and females by mimicking the presumed dominance of men within heterosexual couples. In BL, the gong is almost always stronger than the su and generally exercises power over him within the relationship, a situation portrayed as deriving from his dominant penetrative role in their sexual relations. This relationship was taken up on Twitter in a series of tweets by Yŏŭiju (@im_your_courage), for example.20 According to Yŏŭiju, the ­relationship between the gong and the su directly mirrors that between a man and a woman in Korean society because the gong, the penetrator, is active and strong, and the su, the penetrated, is passive and weak. She also argues that most sexual intercourse depicted in BL is rape, which may be utilized to justify rape in the real world, as BL often shows that the su is submissively controlled by the gong through the act of rape. Here she emphasizes the tendency of BL narratives to permit the gong

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to be sexually active and lewd, while the su virtuously accepts the gong’s violent sexual desire passively, and for this reason specifically the gong and the su can be linked to masculinity and femininity respectively.21 While the gong and su characters indeed seem to be dualistically assigned femininity and masculinity to some extent, it should also be noted that the femininity of the gong is also considered part of his appeal, and that the su is never entirely feminized, albeit in typical BL his masculinity should never exceed that of the gong with whom he is coupled.22 To the extent that BL is indeed centered on gong–su relationships as one of the defining characteristics of the genre, this problem of the characters serving as ciphers for the real-world power inequalities between men and women will not be easy to eradicate. Further, from the perspective of this type of leaving-BL critique, even if an individual BL writer attempts to eliminate the issues of power inequality between the gong and su characters, the genre cannot avoid the underlying issue that female readers will identify with “male characters” as well as idealize them. Since much of BL romanticizes relationships between male characters, readers will inevitably be led to some form of male hero worship. Moreover, this type of critique contends that once women start to idealize men in this way, they will be less able to think objectively about men, and if they repeatedly consume such media, they will ultimately come to sympathize with men and to accept as natural men’s dominant social status, a point reflected in the tweets cited above. Yet, in both Japan and Korea, BL fans and scholars alike, however, have analyzed the complicated nature of “coupling” and the significance and complicated nature of identification from BL readers’ perspective.23 And, although the gong–su relationship certainly reflects some aspects of stereotypical heterosexual relations between men and women, reflecting the fact that the preponderance of BL creators and its fandom are heterosexual women, it is also true that this relationship is not merely a projection of heterosexual relationships. Rather, readers freely identify with both characters, and moreover, often observe interactions between the characters from an omniscient view.24 Another problem with this critique can be found in its ignorance of the changes in BL works over the last thirty years, since the establishment of BL as a commercial genre in Japan in the 1990s. For example, while Mizoguchi Akiko observes that BL works in the early years are often homophobic and misogynistic in their depictions of “real gay”



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and female characters, she also argues that the “evolution” of BL in recent years demonstrates genuine progress on both fronts, as can be seen, for instance, in the works of Yoshinaga Fumi.25 In this respect, it would seem that the second type of leaving-BL argument, stems from a position of ignorance of the fact that, as in Japan, BL in Korea is not monolithic nor is it a static discourse, but, rather, in recent years has gradually tended toward a more progressive sensibility regarding sexual and gender minorities and feminist issues, a shift led not only by writers but also by readers.

3. Leaving BL for its marginalization or exclusion of women This type of argument for leaving BL problematizes “the exclusion of women,” especially the lack of female protagonists in BL narratives. For example, the later-deleted account of Twitter user Dongnegoyong (@man1company) argued that “in BL, female characters remain in supporting roles, and as a result, there is no place for women’s narratives. The essence of BL is the romance and sex between male protagonists, and women are destined to be excluded.”26 If we follow this logic, perhaps it is both absurd and problematic that we might even consider BL a women’s genre at all. This criticism differs from the first and second types, as it is closely intertwined with the resurgence of feminism in the global cultural field. For instance, this problematizing of women’s positionality in BL from a feminist point of view has precedents in Japan. Kurihara Chiyo argued during the “yaoi debate” of the early 1990s, for example, that women should ultimately graduate from BL as soon as they can accept their own desires as women, while admitting the necessity of BL as a temporary refuge.27 A more recent example is the 2015 BL manga anthology Joshi BL (Girl BL), which focuses on the positionality of female characters and female readers in BL works.28 In countering this argument, most BL fans would agree that BL has developed as a genre by and for women, involving a huge number of female writers, editors, and readers—a genre that has served as a useful space for expressing women’s desires and sexuality.29 However, within this third type of leaving-BL critique, the exclusion and/or marginalization of female characters is considered equally problematic to the loss of women’s narratives. The logic behind this position is closely intertwined with the fact that, as suggested in the above cited critique by feminist

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critic Sohn, the great majority of Korean movies depict only homosocial ties between men, but that, nonetheless, these remain popular among female audiences. Supporters of this third argument for leaving BL have very much emerged in the context of recent global movements and backlashes in the entertainment industry, including #MeToo, GamerGate, and the push for equal pay for women in Hollywood, alongside a wider attempt to evaluate all popular culture content on the basis of feminist criteria, such as how much narrative weight is given to female characters and if they are depicted independently and actively. In this respect, BL entirely fails to meet the requirement for “politically correct” content, particularly in relation to the concern with representing a “women’s narrative” (yŏsŏngsŏsa) because the genre is basically centered on the depiction of romance between male characters. This phrase yŏsŏngsŏsa, or “women’s narrative,” has been articulated on social media in the form of a continuum,30 whereby all popular content, regardless of genres or target audience, can be classified into four stages of women’s narrative according to their defining characteristics. The first stage is “male only” works. These are characterized as those in which “only male characters are important [and] female characters might appear as a corpse, or if living, as a saint or prostitute in misery porn narratives that feature only a small appearance by women.” The next stage is “semi-women’s narrative,” characterized by female protagonists, strong and active female characters, depicting heterosexual romance and marriage and no sexual objectification of women. According to “women’s narrative” continuum discourse, popular cultural content can only strive to belong to this category, with most failing to even remotely meet these requirements. In the third stage, the narrative is assumed to have female characters as protagonists and in supporting roles, strong and active roles for women, no focus on romance or marriage, and no sexual objectification of women. In the works belonging to the final and best stage, “feminism narratives,” there is no “dress-up labor” (kkumim nodong) wherein women are expected to dress in narrowly defined feminine ways. Such works should ideally be in documentary format rather than fiction. From the perspective of this narrative continuum, BL is a typical example of a first stage “male only” genre, in that female characters tend to appear as either saints or prostitutes, if at all. Therefore, BL is not so different from other patriarchal popular content, and in fact could be



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considered even more dangerous because it encourages female readers to deny their own “female” bodies through identifying with male characters. When faced with this kind of criticism that problematizes “the absence of women,” what kind of positive progressive response can the BL genre offer a critical feminist perspective? There is no easy answer, not least because this question dovetails precisely with contemporary global feminist critiques of all cultural production.

The Implications of Leaving BL in the Era of Feminism After analyzing these three types of arguments for leaving BL and the logic behind their critiques, we might conclude that they are based on the same hypothesis, irrespective of the differences in their precise critical framing. These critiques reflect a way of thinking that considers representation, fantasy, and reality as fundamentally the same: in essence, representation is merely a reflection of reality. Moreover, these critiques hold that the message of the author is delivered to readers without the need for any interpretation, and furthermore that this message, and/ or the depicted content of the work functions to form and control the actions and thoughts of its readers. Perhaps the most serious problem with this simplified logic of representation, fantasy, and reality that the leaving-BL movement presupposes is that all such arguments tend to ignore and erase the independent desire of BL readers as active consumers. In this regard, is changing representation equal to changing reality? Or does the production of the social world rely on more nuanced actions and understandings of consumers within? How much influence do individual consumers have on pop culture content that is designed and created on a large scale? And, finally, given these issues, can we help abolish misogyny and discrimination against women by leaving BL? The answer to such questions is anything but simple. Another fundamental problem with the discourse that surrounds leaving BL is that there is virtually no discussion on the positionality and desire of the (female) authors who create this content. The arguments are mainly based on readers’ presumed critical perspectives as the consumers of BL content. No interest is expressed as to why authors create such works and what authors hope to express and deliver. Across all these arguments almost all emphasis is given to the influence of BL works

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on readers and society. Accordingly, full responsibility to lessen the discrimination suffered by women is forcibly imparted upon BL authors. Meanwhile the wider critical context of Korea’s patriarchal society, including female oppression and a cultural industry historically devoted to the production of misogynistic contents, is largely lost from view. This focus on blaming the genre itself and its creators has recently led to an unexpected negative side effect of the leaving-BL movement: the cyberbullying of authors. Numerous BL authors have reported malicious comments on their web novels and comics. This is especially severe for the creators of work dealing with “problematic” themes, such as rape and romance between adults and teenagers, who are now regularly subjected to comments regarding their presumed immorality and even semicriminality. Cyberbullies even recently demanded that the famous BL author “Gwendolin” (Kŭwendollin) write “women’s narrative” novels instead of BL because BL was not perceived as a beneficial genre for women by anonymous respondents on her influential Q&A Internet board. After making clear that she had previously written several girls love (GL; female–female romance) works under a different pen name, Gwendolin became a target for cyberbullies who labelled her a misogynist and even went as far as to accuse her of plagiarism, a situation which forced the author to take legal action.31 On final reflection, in keeping with the arguments of the leaving-BL movement, we are left with a number of fundamental questions: Should we then abolish BL entirely because we need women’s narratives instead? And if not, should BL be changed in some way? Should the many women who have embraced BL as a refuge to satisfy their desire critically reflect upon their supposedly flawed perspectives and change their tastes to embrace politically correct women’s narratives? Before answering these questions, it is important to remember that BL manga was created in Japan at the beginning of the 1970s and welcomed in 1990s Korea, and in both contexts, its popularity stemmed from the fact it was virtually the only genre that enabled women to express and explore their sexual desires and transgress the boundaries of masculinity and femininity. This history is a critical point that the proponents of leaving BL have failed to address. Whether the leaving-BL movement is perhaps too aggressive, extreme, and specific to the Korean “feminism reboot” context to provide a useful model for contemporary feminist critique in other cultural arenas, the overall question that the movement raises should still be seriously considered. What kind of meanings will BL have in this global cultural arena,



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an arena increasingly influenced by mainstream feminism and gender and sexual minority movements? What might be the future of BL if the genre were to evolve into a more “politically correct” form?32 These questions that leaving BL raises are not limited to the Korean feminist context. Indeed, it is perhaps time for us to contemplate the wider potential meanings of “representations” within BL “fantasy” and its relationship with the (re)creation of the “reality” we all inhabit. This question is vital both for the young women attempting to realize the free expression of their desires in the face of an oppressive patriarchy and for the gay community, whose imagined interactions anchor these dreams of love and lust.

Notes  1.  While “BL” is sometimes written in Roman letters in Korean, more often than not, “BL” in this term is written phonetically as “biel” as it can be typed more quickly. From the website Trending-Topics.co, we can see that t’albiel (all forms) trended on Korean-language Twitter between 2018 and 2019. See http://trending-topics.co/search.php?g=kr&u=%ED%83%88 %EB%B9%84%EC%97%98. 2. P’eminijŭm Ch’onggonggye (@e_femi_tyu337), Twitter post, February 9, 2019, 5:31 a.m., https://twitter.com/e_femi_tyu337/status/10939706 32906235904. Hashtags in quoted tweets in this chapter have been translated from Korean. 3.  Tonginchi and its short form, tongin, are sometimes Romanized donginji and dongin, respectively. 4.  Sohn Hee Jeong, “P’eminichŭm ribut’ŭ: Han’guk yŏnghwarŭl t’ong­ hae ponŭn p’osŭt’ŭ-p’eminichŭm, kŭrigo kŭ ihu,” Munhwagwahak 83 (2015): 29–35. 5.  Refer to Kwon’s chapter in this volume. 6. Kim Hyojin “T’onginnyŏt’ŭi palgyŏn’gwa chaehyŏn: Han’guk sun­ jŏngmanhwaŭi saryerŭl chungshimŭro,” Asia munhwa yŏnku 30 (2013): 45, 53–54. 7.  Mark McLelland, “Gay Men as Women’s Ideal Partners in Japanese Popular Culture: Are Gay Men Really a Girl’s Best Friend?” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal 17 (1999). 8.  The first of these, Chapchi hujo (2015; Magazine hujo), focused on “hujo [as] seen by hujo”; Chapchi ppasun (2017; Magazine for female idol fans) and Metahujo (2017) followed in succession.

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9.  Ironically, these books faced fierce criticism from the Korean hujoshi community because (1) many hujoshi still thought that BL should be hidden like pornography (or stay in a gray area); and (2) these books emphasize hujoshi’s self-reflection on the issues of sexual minorities and women’s sexuality. 10.  Totomeri, “Me.t’a.hu.jo?—Met’a-hujo’ŭi chŏngŭiwa, wae i p’ŭrojekt’ŭ­ rŭl shijak’age toeŏnnŭn’gae taehayŏ,” Metahujo (Korea: Metahoju Pyeonjip­ bu, 2017), 20. 11. Yorisaan, “Hujoshiŭi wŏnjoe—Hujoshinŭn wae hyŏnshil homoe ­taehae araya hanŭn’ga,” Metahujo, 87. 12.  Totomeri, “Me.t’a.hu.jo?” 29. 13.  The reason that BL fandom is problematized here can be found in Kim’s explanation: “the connection between the misogynistic culture and male-centered narratives in Korean films, in which women tend to be ‘eye candy’ or victims of male violence.” See Kim Jinsook, “After the Disclosures: A Year of #Sexual_Violence_in_the_Film_Industry in South Korea,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 3 (2018): 506. 14.  Sohn, “P’eminichŭm ribut’ŭ.” 15. For example, Nŭgaebisŭk’on (Pandonggyŏl) (@nugaebiscon), Twitter post, April 17, 2018, 5:57 p.m., https://twitter.com/nugaebiscon /status/986234792260747269. 16.  There are several examples of the mass media coverage of this phenomena as proved by Seo Dong-jin and Lee Jeong-woo—gay activists’ comments that the popularity of gay movies in 2000s Korea largely depended on tonginnyo (tongin women), in other words, hujoshi. For more information, see Kim, “T’onginnyŏt’ŭi palgyŏn’gwa chaehyŏn,” 45. 17. See, for example, the blog post T’ŭraensŭ mŏngmŏngi, “Minmunnimgwaŭi taehwat’araee taehan taedap (2): Keinamsŏngdŭrŭi misojiniwa keiŭi tŭraek,” Raedik’ŏl p’eminijŭmŭl ch’ŏŭm shijak’anŭn p’emidŭrŭl wihan annaesŏ, October 31, 2017, https://radicalfemiscool.postype.com /post/1203410. 18.  “Keidŭri yŏjarŭl ’ppollogi’rago hyŏmohanŭn iyunŭn?” Kukminilbo, July 22, 2016, http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0010801099. 19. Wim Lunsing, “Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics, Gay Comics and Gay Pornography,” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, no. 12 (2006), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/lunsing.html. 20.  This thread comprises eleven tweets, and the main quotes here come from Yŏŭiju (@im_your_courage)’s Twitter posts on, August 12, 11:23 a.m.,



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https://twitter.com/im_your_courage/status/1028708466603384832, and August 12, 10:49 a.m., https://twitter.com/im_your_courage/status /1028700049222426624. 21.  Yŏŭiju (@im_your_courage), Twitter post, August 12, 10:49 a.m., https://twitter.com/im_your_courage/status/1028700049222426624. 22.  My point here is similar to Nagakubo Yōko’s analysis of masculinity and femininity in the seme–uke relationship. See her Yaoi shōsetsuron: Josei no tame no erosu hyōgen (Tokyo: Senshū Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2005). 23. On Korea, refer to Ryu Jin Hee, “P’aenp’ik: Tongsŏng(sŏng)ae sŏsaŭi yŏsŏng konggan,” Yŏsŏngmunhakyŏn’gu, no. 20 (2008), and on Japan, Mizoguchi Akiko, BL shinkaron: Bōizu rabu ga shakai o ugokasu (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 2015). 24. Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron, 80–82. 25. Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron, 141–144. 26. Dongnegoyong (@man1company), Twitter post, August 11, 2018, 8:17 a.m., https://twitter.com/man1company/status/1028284931418382337. 27.  Cited in Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron, 93–128. 28.  Joshi BL (Tokyo: Ribure Shuppan, 2015). 29. See, for example, Randy (@@1bl_yoos2), Twitter post, September 18, 2019, 9:26 p.m., https://twitter.com/1bl_yoos2/status/117454024 4122624001. 30.  Found in a blog post by Pŭllumi, “11wŏl ch’ŏt chumal #yŏsŏngsŏsa #syotk’ŏt #yŏsŏngsobich’ongp’aŏp #saenggak,” Kkaeŏnasŏ saragagi, November 4, 2018, 5:59 p.m., https://m.blog.naver.com/wjdalstar/221391439007, created by the Twitter user @desingergoja, originally posted October 30, 2018, https://twitter.com/Designergoja/status/1057248685828915201, and was subsequently deleted. 31.  As of June 2019, the heated discussion between Gwendolin and her anonymous questioners could be found on her account @Bloomingspring3 on askfm, a popular global social networking platform that allows users to send and answer questions anonymously. See for example, https://ask .fm/Bloomingspring3/answers/153506639293, January 24, 2019, 1:50 p.m. (GMT), https://ask.fm/Bloomingspring3/answers/153514373309, January 24, 2019, 4:50 p.m., and https://ask.fm/Bloomingspring3/answers /153523801277, January 25, 2019, 4:49 p.m. 32.  See chapter 4 in Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron.

chapter 9

Repression or Revolution? On the Taiwanese BL Fan Community’s Reactions to the Same-Sex Marriage Legalization Movement Peiti Wang

On May 17, 2019, Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, approved a same-sex marriage bill, making Taiwan the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.1 In terms of LGBT rights and gender equality, Taiwan might be considered one of the most progressive countries in Asia. Nevertheless, the liberalization exemplified by the legalization of same-sex marriage did not come about organically but rather resulted from decades of effort toward social transformation. This legal transformation of marriage in Taiwan can, in a sense, be traced back to the process of democratization after martial law was lifted in 1987, and Taiwanese people gradually regained freedom of speech, assembly, and association, including the right to participate in social movements, which some exercised to work for the expansion of the rights of women and gender and sexual minorities. In addition to feminist and LGBT rights movements that emerged or grew stronger following the end of martial law, since the 1990s homosexual-themed literature, art, films, and other cultural products have helped spread new notions of gender diversity and equality that have gradually been accepted in Taiwanese society, especially among the younger generation. In the midst of this cultural diversification, Japanese BL media and culture became increasingly available to and popular among young women in Taiwan. While the influence of other literature and media should not be discounted, as Fran Martin has argued, interaction with BL texts since that time has enabled and encouraged fans to collectively think about and discuss issues of gender and sexuality,2 a point explored in other chapters in this volume.

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Drawing from this observation, I am interested in how BL fans in Taiwan incorporated ideologies of gender and sexuality into the recent debates over same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage had been discussed in Taiwan since the late 1980s.3 However, it was not until the 2000s that the legalization of same-sex marriage began to draw significant attention from the public as well as from lawmakers, coming to a head in the winter of 2016 when the same-sex marriage bill passed its first reading in the Legislative Yuan. In response to this development, both opponents and proponents of same-sex marriage initiated a series of feverish protests and events. The largest among these was a concert called “Cherish Every Life, Support Marriage Equality” (Rang shengming buzai shiqu, wei hunyin pingquan zhanchula), held on December 10 that year by Taiwan’s “Tongzhi” (LGBT) Hotline Association and other LGBT organizations. The concert was attended by over 250,000, according to at least one media report.4 From my own observations at and surrounding the event, I could see that these individuals came from various backgrounds and different cultural groups, including members of various professional organizations representing lawyers, physicians, police officers, social workers, psychiatrists, artists, historians, teachers, and members of other fields. Notable among these participants were “funü”—the Taiwanese version of the Japanese term “fujoshi,” that is, female fans of boys love (BL) media.5 Some of these fans hid their identity as funü, while others used their funü identity to support the marriage equality concert campaign. In this chapter, I offer a preliminary examination of Taiwanese BL fans’ reactions to the possible legalization of same-sex marriage by drawing upon the debates discussed on social media and the results from an online survey that I conducted around the time of the concert campaign. According to the online survey, a high percentage of funü are supportive of same-sex marriage. However, when it comes to online discourse, BL fans revealed highly divergent attitudes on whether it was appropriate to use their funü identity to support the campaign. Below I discuss various motivations for their attitudes about this campaign. I conclude the chapter by claiming that, no matter whether individuals advocated adhering to self-imposed regulations or being open—whether they were repressed or revolutionary—the act of participation in such discussions enabled them to rethink their own gender identities and relate their personal experience to the

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reality of LGBT lives in Taiwan. It further prompted them to engage with feminist ideas on such issues as misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexual hegemony.

Initiating the Campaign and the Funü Survey As soon as the date of the marriage equality concert was announced, Cocome and I, both known as BL researchers and authors in Taiwan, decided to start a campaign to organize funü to participate in the December 10, 2016, event. Identifying simultaneously as a gay man and as a funü, Cocome attempted to facilitate an alliance between the funü and gay communities—premised on the idea that both were obviously suppressed and stigmatized in the society due to their sexual desires.6 We set up a Facebook event page as a part of our campaign to call for funü to come together to support marriage equality.7 However, this campaign resulted in a great deal of pushback from the online BL fan community—including arguments against funü taking a prominent role in same-sex marriage activism, debate over funü exploitation of gay culture, and introspection about misogyny within BL culture. During the same period, I conducted a Chinese-language online survey on BL fans’ overall attitudes about same-sex marriage. The survey was distributed via various social media, including Facebook fan pages, BBS forums, and “Plurk,” an important social networking and microblogging service used by many Taiwanese BL fans. From December 1 to 8, 2016, I collected a total of 4,050 responses and found that BL fans were overwhelmingly strongly supportive of same-sex marriage.

Funü “Coming Out of the Closet”? As soon as Cocome and I created the campaign for funü to participate in the same-sex marriage concert, there were many online discussions debating about whether or not BL fans should use the label funü to support same-sex marriage in the concert. Many BL fans instinctively opposed this proposal because they felt deeply uneasy about their funü identity turning public. In online discussions, many BL fans used the term “low-key” (di­ diao) to express their urge to refrain from publicizing their interests.8 There are many reasons why BL fans choose to stay low-key. Notable among them is the fact that, regardless of the recent successful push for



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same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships are still discriminated against in Taiwan. And then there is the issue of the “perverted” fantasies of funü about such relationships. To most funü, such sexual fantasies are personal and private, but, to the extent that the conservative public at large is aware of them, they are unacceptable and stigmatized. As a ­result, as many BL fans have stated online, they prefer to avoid causing or being the focus of trouble by staying low-key. My online survey similarly indicates that BL fans generally think that funü identity should be kept secret. Among respondents, 50.8 percent answered that they would not disclose their interest in BL to outsiders, that is, to non-BL fans, whereas only 30.5 percent replied that they would. Moreover, 61.2 percent of respondents said they would not “discuss BL content with outsiders.” This shows that BL fans tend to prefer staying within their own circles and avoiding interaction with others about their fandom. For some funü, reflecting the aforementioned online discourse, interest in BL seems socially stigmatized. This is mostly because of their having had bad experiences when their feelings about BL were discovered by parents or friends who considered these BL fans to be “sick,” “perverted,” or “homosexual.” These funü opt to censor or repress their sexual fantasies in response to societal homophobia and heteronormativity. In short, the experience of a negative reaction to their fandom of BL has led some fans to choose to stay low-key. It is unsurprising, then, that the same-sex marriage concert campaign, which encouraged active and open participation by funü, made a lot of fans feel internally conflicted. Even though they were in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage, many were clear that they would much rather participate as normative “heterosexuals” or participate as part of some other group than participate openly as “funü.” Much of this discussion took place online, including on the BL Board on the PTT BBS, an important online forum for BL fans. One user on this board, whom I am referring to as “yylover” (a user name I have assigned to preserve their anonymity, as I do with all fans quoted in this chapter) explained: “I think using the identity of ‘heterosexual’ to support samesex marriage has more collective power. As for the identity of funü, because a lot of people don’t understand it, I’m afraid it will obscure the main purpose [of the event].” Yylover was far from the only BL fan to question the “appropriateness” of supporting same-sex marriage under the banner of funü.

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These BL fans’ concerns were that funü comprise a socially disadvantaged group—both misunderstood and stereotyped. Many people in Taiwan already had negative stereotypes and misunderstandings about LGBT people, and if funü were to participate in the campaign, those fans were afraid that it would make the issue even more complicated, obfuscating the “main goal” of same-sex marriage. One implication of this stance is that funü are socially discriminated against. These arguments about societal impressions of funü can also be linked to the longstanding practice of self-imposed regulations among BL fans.

Self-Imposed Regulations Japanese dōjinshi (fanzine) culture was first introduced to Taiwan in the form of male–male romantic derivatives of Saint Seiya and similar works in the mid- to late 1980s.9 However, in the early years, homosexuality and women pursuing sexual fantasies or even admitting their sexual desires were not accepted within the heteronormative, patriarchal society, leading Taiwanese BL fans to grow accustomed to negative stereotypes about them. They gradually formulated a collective system of self-imposed regulations in order to avoid trouble. For instance, when they posted BL texts or pictures on their websites or blogs, they had to preface these with clear warnings, such as “Warning/Alert/This website contains BL (yaoi)/Please leave if you cannot accept this genre,” which users had to read before entering the websites. Of course, chatting about BL contents in public was considered very inappropriate. In some cases, these rules have been written down. For example, on the BL Board on PTT BBS members set up rules for participants. If users did not follow those rules, their posts would be removed from the board; their user IDs would be blocked for particularly egregious violations. Part of the PTT BL Board Principles state (as of June 2017): “In the case of posts which are considered inappropriate for public discussion [i.e., for non-funü who happen to enter this forum], including depictions of sexual activity, stories pairing real persons, and spoilers— please add warnings in the title and leave one page blank at the beginning of the posts.” These self-imposed regulations among BL fans were created to prevent outsiders from bursting into their fantasy world, resulting in misunderstandings or, worse, severe condemnation of BL fans by outsiders. Because such negative impressions and conflicts had come about



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in the past, most BL fans considered these regulations to be necessary to protect their community. Moreover, regulations also included not discussing BL in public or in front of outsiders and not disclosing their funü identity to outsiders. In his 2015 book, Fufu dezheng (Two funü/ negatives make a positive), Cocome has explained the situation thusly: “In an atmosphere of homophobia, in which outsiders see them in an unfriendly light, funü have to stay ‘low-key’ regarding their interests and passions . . . thus ‘hiding in the closet’: their BL interests become an unspeakable secret, being hidden behind [the closet door].”10 As Cocome has pointed out, funü are in a situation of being discriminated against as “homosexuals” or “sex perverts” in a manner akin to the LGBT community. Their experience has taught them to repress their passions and desires, and to hide in the closet. In other words, these regulations are at once a way for funü to protect themselves and a form of self-repression. Their instinctive opposition to the idea of publicly supporting the campaign as funü can be regarded as a kind of defense mechanism.

BL Fantasy versus Gay Reality In online discussions, some BL fans questioned whether funü identity had any relevance to the support of LGBT rights. BL fans used to differentiate between BL fantasy and the experiences of real gay men, and some would deny any correlation between the two. One poster on the social network Plurk, mentioned above, wrote: “I have the impression that, in the early years, gay men disliked funü. There were some words sneering at funü on the Gay Board [of the PTT BBS]” (Agnes). On the one hand, BL fans were concerned about how gay men perceived funü. They worried about gay men accusing them of exploiting representations of gay lives, something that has been an issue in Japan.11 Such concerns have led some funü to feel guilty about voyeuristically gazing at these gay men’s sex lives, as well as consuming, fantasizing, and reproducing these images. These same-sex fantasies are a source of pleasure for funü, and, at one and the same time, a source of guilt. Therefore, many BL fans refused both to recognize the link between BL fantasy and gay reality, and to disclose their identity as funü in front of LGBT people. On the other hand, it has often been said that there are fans who enjoy reading fictional BL stories but in fact dislike real gay men. Lines

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such as “not every funü likes real gay men” or “I know some funü would feel sick [thinking] about [real] gay men” have often been repeated in fan networks. Interestingly, such statements are invariably referring to others, not the statement makers. For instance, Djzero wrote on Plurk, “I’ve met some funü who feel sick about real gay men. I don’t believe that all funü necessarily support same-sex marriage.” In a similar vein, some fans have questioned the homogeneity of BL fandom regarding support for same-sex marriage and their attitudes about real gay men—or LGBT people in general. Indeed, funü have never been a homogeneous group, and of course, there might be some who oppose same-sex marriage. And yet, as a community sharing fantasies about homoerotic romance, a surprisingly high percentage of BL fans have exhibited support for same-sex marriage—far higher than the general population. Nevertheless, the reasoning behind their support is not necessarily rooted in reality. Commenting on Plurk, Nanalin pointed out that “many funü support same-sex marriage because their fantasy of homosexuality is beautiful and idealistic, not because they realize that there are various homosexuals who exist in the real social sphere [they also inhabit].” In my online survey, 95.8 percent of BL fan respondents agreed that “every individual’s rights and obligations should be ensured equally by law, no matter what his/her sexual orientation is (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, etc.).” In addition, 93.2 percent “agreed/strongly agreed” that “same-sex marriage should be included in the Civil Code.” To the same question, just 3.6 percent responded that they had “no opinion” and 3.1 percent “disagreed/strongly disagreed” with the change. Despite widespread speculation in the community that “some” funü dislike gay men, the responses make it quite clear that BL fans are in favor of same-sex marriage by a surprisingly high percentage. By contrast, results of the 2015 Taiwan Social Change Survey conducted by the Center for Survey Research at Academia Sinica indicate that just 54.2 percent of Taiwanese citizens supported same-sex marriage while 37.1 percent opposed it.12 By way of comparison with BL fans overseas, while in striking contrast with some advocates of “leaving BL” in South Korea described by Hyojin Kim in this volume, the results of my survey of Taiwanese fans align neatly with Dru Pagliassotti’s reports of 2005– 2007 surveys of English- and Italian-speaking BL fans, which found that 96 percent of BL readers supported the legalization of same-sex marriage.13



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Revolution and Moving On While some BL fans opposed participating in the same-sex marriage campaign as funü, others held very much the opposite opinion. These fans were aware of the fact that the community’s self-imposed regulations functioned as a kind of self-discrimination. They did not feel guilty or the need to hide their identities as funü. Among the online discussions on Plurk, Mimi wrote: Hiding in the closet and cutting out our own funü identity simply because the public tends to misunderstand us? This is a kind of self-discrimination. . . . I feel you are discriminating against my funü identity. You think we should all cover our faces [i.e., our identities] and stay low-key? You feel this identity is immoral, and we should all feel ashamed and not speak out loud? I think such thoughts are far from the goal of this campaign—the pursuit of equality. Procampaign fans criticized how the low-key principle demonstrated exactly how funü were repressed in society, and they felt offended when others told them not to openly disclose their funü identity. Mimi, quoted above, further pointed out that the thought of staying low-key is contrary to the core idea of the marriage equality concert. In such beliefs, Mimi represents the radical and revolutionary side of BL fans. They embraced their sexual fantasies and directly confronted the discrimination against funü—even when the discrimination was from funü themselves. Their arguments and their choice to act actively highlighted the resistance inherent in BL culture: to fight against the mainstream heterosexual hegemony and repression of female desire. In the online debate on same-sex marriage, procampaign BL fans also pointed out that the social environment in Taiwan has been changing. The public at large or the gay community might have had prejudice against funü ten years ago, but the situation is different now. Moreover, some fans mentioned their own experience to explain how their funü identity is related to LGBT events, and why they believe showing their funü identity to support the LGBT rights is meaningful and significant. Mimi reflected: Before entering the BL world, I had once thought that gay men are strange. However, through reading various BL works,

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I became accustomed to 2.5-dimensional BL products [such as plastic figures],14 and to watching gay-related movies. Even though BL is not necessarily connected with real gay men, I think it provides a bridge for easy access [to understanding the reality of gay lives]. Like Mimi, many BL fans have been able to link their personal BL reading practices with their (first) contact with the LGBT community— even if they still consider these two different worlds, that is, fantasy versus reality. However, the blurred boundary between BL fantasy and gay reality has been noticed. For example, in a discussion on Plurk, Lucy pointed out that BL fans and the LGBT community are no longer two separate categories. As she mentioned, some BL fans are actively involved in LGBT-related events, and LGBT members are probably BL fans, too. If you visited the Taichung GDi [Association for LGBT], you’d find out there is a bookshelf there full of BL and for-adults-only manga. Among their volunteers, you could also find out those same young and non-LGBT girls are probably BL fans. You could also hear the staff making jokes with them: “Are you coming here to watch handsome gays?” or, “Looking for handsome Ts [tomboys, i.e., butch lesbians]?” In addition, a teenaged boy might tell you that his sexual orientation was awakened by reading his sister’s BL manga. In fact, many BL fans are part of the LGBT community. From my online survey it can be seen that BL fans’ sexual orientations and gender identities are diverse, with a sizable number of respondents identifying as bisexual. According to the results, 52.7 percent of BL fan respondents identified themselves as “heterosexual,” 1.7 percent as “gay [male],” 2.4 percent as “lesbian,” 33 percent as “bisexual,” and 10.1 percent as “other” (including asexual, pansexual, unknown, and no answers). In addition, in response to my question about gender identity, 92.3 percent identified themselves as female (including 0.3 percent who identified themselves as transwomen), 3.7 percent as male (0.3 percent transmen), 2.3 percent considered themselves genderqueer (xingbie kuer), and 1.5 percent described their gender as something other than those categories. By contrast, a poll on Taiwanese



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adults in 2012 showed that only 1.7 percent of adult citizens recognized themselves as bisexual and 0.2 percent as homosexual.15 The diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities I found echo Pagliassotti’s aforementioned survey of Western countries, which found, among other things, a similarly high percentage of BL readers identifying as bisexual: 25 percent of English-speaking and 18 percent of Italianspeaking BL readers. Pagliassotti concluded that in the United States, for instance, BL readers are more diverse in sexual orientation and are more likely than fans in Japan to link reading BL to supporting gay rights.16 Taiwan clearly demonstrates a phenomenon similar to that in the United States at work.

Alliance with the LGBT Community As I have shown above, BL fans in Taiwan are not monolithic. BL fandom is not comprised entirely of heterosexual females. Moreover, BL fans and members of the LGBT community are not two distinct groups. Furthermore, as Lucy stated in the comment I quoted above, BL fans’ sexual orientations might be affected by their reading of BL texts. Prominent BL scholar Mizoguchi Akiko, for instance, has stated that her personal experience of reading BL helped lead to her awakening as a lesbian.17 Although it would be dangerous to conclude that the negativity some gay men have expressed toward funü is entirely a thing of the past, their hostility toward funü in the early years of BL fandom in Taiwan has now largely transformed into acceptance—to the extent that some even positively welcome funü as their allies in a collective fight for gender equity. And in the case of the “Cherish Every Life, Support Marriage Equality” concert campaign, the LGBT group organizer indeed officially welcomed funü as allies. The debate about whether to participate in the same-sex marriage campaign “as funü” has highlighted differences among BL fans in Taiwan. Yet, the crux of the matter is not about whether to support same-sex marriage, but about whether funü identity should stay “low-key” or come out into the open. As I have illustrated in this chapter, some BL fans who had been adhering to “self-imposed regulations” felt pressure “to come out of the closet” during the campaign, which spanned between 2016 and the Supreme Court ruling, while others felt fine with publicly identifying themselves as funü, even linking their own BL reading with their support

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of LGBT rights. No matter which camp they were in, their discussions about the same-sex marriage campaign were largely based on the assumption that they were all in favor of the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is important to note that, in the course of the debate over the same-sex marriage campaign, many other issues related to gender and sexuality have also been highlighted, including whether BL fandom is part of a culture of “misogyny”—an issue Hyojin Kim explores in this volume—and entailing concepts such as “homophobia,” “heterosexual hegemony,” and “patriarchal repression.” BL fans who participated in the debate acquired knowledge of gender theories, as well as reflected about whether they themselves were gender-blind, misogynistic, or otherwise prejudiced in regard to gender. Some studies have suggested that BL fandom can be considered a “counterpublic” within which BL fans are enabled to challenge the mainstream heterosexual hegemony by expressing their desires.18 To what extent does the BL fandom in Asia support such an argument? In this volume, for instance, Lakshmi Menon and Gita Pramudita Prameswari show that reading BL helps fujoshi in India and Indonesia access the idea of gender and sexual diversity and engage with LGBT issues, in some cases reconsidering religious and social prohibitions and proscriptions of homosexuality. Although neither labels the fandoms they examine as counterpublics, BL culture in Taiwan has specifically been described as a counterpublic by Fran Martin.19 And yet, Feichi Chiang argues that some Taiwanese BL fans’ opposition to stories that pair real people indicates that BL fans do not always constitute a counterpublic to the extent that certain fans, in fact, espouse mainstream values.20 Thus, treating the entire BL fan community in Taiwan as a counterpublic is not necessarily clear-cut. Indeed, BL fandom is not a homogeneous group—BL fans have various reading experiences and face different social pressures. In the case of the same-sex marriage debate among Taiwanese BL fans, despite the feverishness of their disputes, their participation in the online forum discussion also makes them “feel empowered”—from the feminist critique inherent in BL and in fan discourse, whether implicit or explicit.21 In the same-sex marriage debate, many BL fans are sensitive to gender issues alongside LGBT rights, and many are actively concerned about women’s situation in contemporary Taiwanese society. The exchanges and interactions have allowed BL fans to gain and to express female empowerment—which I have previously described as “fujoshi power.”22



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In Taiwan, participation in BL culture is becoming more and more prevalent among girls and is changing their views of gender relations. “Fujoshi power”—or, more specifically, “funü power”—means that BL fans are empowered via their BL fan practices to challenge the existing patriarchal gender structure, and to assert that female subjectivity and female desires require serious attention. Funü participation in the same-sex marriage campaign and BL fans’ enthusiastic discussions on the topic are a perfect case in point. No matter whether they agreed with the idea of participating openly as funü, almost everyone wanted to contribute to the campaign in their own way. While there have been some tensions within the BL fan community over the campaign specifically and over self-imposed regulations more generally, still I consider BL fans in Taiwan to have the potential to challenge, resist, and even undo the injustices and inequality rooted in sexuality and gender in their society.

Notes  1.  This bill was pushed and made possible due to a May 2017 ruling by the Constitutional Court that the current Civil Code banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and demanding the legislators amend or enact relevant laws within two years. Yet the government delayed undertaking the necessary legislative moves, and opponents seized the chance and forced a referendum in November 2018 against incorporating same-sex marriage into the current Civil Code. While the referendum result showed that a majority of voters opposed changing the definition of marriage in the Civil Code, the Legislative Yuan nevertheless legalized same-sex marriage in 2019. Although the new law does not provide complete equality for same-sex couples, it still represents a big step for the LGBT community in Taiwan, as well as in Asia more broadly. 2. Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: Japanese Homoerotic Manga as Trans-national Taiwan Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12, no. 3 (2012): 374. 3. Meng-hsin Tien, “Behind Taiwan’s Same-Sex Marriage Law, the 30-Year Crusade,” CommonWealth Magazine, May 22, 2018, https://english .cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=2410. 4. Liu Hsiu Wen, “250,000 Turn Out in Taipei for Same-Sex Marriage,” Asia Times, December 12, 2017, http://www.atimes.com/article /250000-turn-taipei-gay-marriage/.

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5. In Taiwan, the Japanese word fujoshi, meaning rotten girls/ women can be pronounced funüzi but is most often rendered as funü. Male BL fans are called funan, rotten boys/men, the Chinese version of the Japanese word fudanshi. In more recent articles, many critics use the fu (rotten) of these words in the new, more inclusive fuzhong (rotten p ­ eople) or fufu (rotten rotten) to include women, men, and other g ­ enders in the same term. In this chapter, I use the term funü to specifically refer to fans who clearly and actively identify themselves as funü. When d ­ iscussing this fandom more broadly, I will simply use “BL fans.” 6.  To learn more about his research and interviews on how Taiwanese BL fans were repressed and stigmatized in ways similar to the situation of gay community, see Cocome, Fufu dezheng—Nanren de youqing jiushi jienqing (Taipei: Qiyiguo Wenchuang, 2015). 7. The event page, “Xiangting wei pingquan, fufu ting tongzhi,” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/events/698193253687698/, was created on November 30, 2016. 8.  The data about online discussions are drawn from observations and data collected from threads, messages, and conversations from PTT, Plurk, and Facebook. In this chapter I have changed BL fans’ user names to further ensure their privacy. 9. Miyako, “Taiwan tongren huodong de zhuanbian yu tese,” in Dongman shehuixue: Benben de dansheng, ed. Wang Peiti (Taipei: Qiyiguo Wenchuang, 2016): 80–81. 10. Cocome, Fufu dezheng, 217. 11.  Ishida Hitoshi, “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL,” trans. Katsuhiko Suganuma, in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 12.  2015 Taiwan Social Change Survey, Center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica (2017), accessed June 1, 2017, https://srda.sinica.edu.tw /datasearch_detail.php?id=2221. 13.  Dru Pagliassotti, “Reading Boys’ Love in the West,” Particip@tions 5, no. 2 (November 2008), http://www.participations.org/Volume%205 /Issue%202/5_02_pagliassotti.htm. 14. “2.5 dimensional” refers to making two-dimensional manga or anime characters into three-dimensional products, such as plastic figures or cosplay activities.



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15.  2012 Taiwan Social Change Survey, Center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica, (2014), accessed June 1, 2017, https://srda.sinica.edu .tw/datasearch_detail.php?id=2216. 16.  Pagliassotti, “Reading Boys’ Love in the West,” table 3. 17. Mizoguchi Akiko, BL shinkaron: Bōizu rabu ga shakai o ugokasu (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 2015), 11–12. 18. Mark McLelland and Yoo Seunghyun, “The International Yaoi Boys’ Love Fandom and the Regulation of Virtual Child Pornography: Current Legislation and Its Implications,” Journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy 4, no. 1 (2007): 100; Andrea Wood, “‘Straight’ Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1/2 (2006): 405, 409. 19.  Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love,” 374–375. 20.  Feichi Chiang, “Counterpublic but Obedient: A case of Taiwan’s BL Fandom,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2016). 21.  For feminist cultural studies on how female readers or audiences are empowered by reading romance novels or watching soap operas, see Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984). 22.  Peiti Wang, “On Fujoshi Power: How Taiwanese Fujoshi Play with the Sex/Gender System,” paper presented at the Labor of Animation Conference, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (June 17–18, 2016).

Part I I

Southeast Asia

chapter 10

Hiding in Plain Sight Boys Love Content at Indonesia’s “Comic Frontier” Kania Arini Sukotjo

On a warm September morning in 2017 in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city, dozens of young Indonesians in their teens, twenties, and thirties are standing in front of the glass doors of the Balai Kartika exhibition and convention center, waiting for the biannual Comic Frontier event to begin. Inspired by Comic Market (also known as “Comiket”), Japan’s largest fan event, Comic Frontier (“Comifuro”), strives to provide an artistic platform primarily for local creators whose works are based on or otherwise linked to Japanese anime, manga, and video games. For those who have an interest in boys love (BL) content, Comifuro provides a safe space for the distribution and consumption of such content in Indonesia. BL first caught the attention of anime and manga fans in Indonesia through online engagements with global manga and anime fan discourse. Its entry into specifically Indonesian fan spaces seems to have occurred several decades after the male homoerotic genre’s early 1970s emergence in Japan. At the time the genre was referred to by its tiny population of fans in Indonesia using the even earlier Japanese labels “shōnen’ai” (also meaning boys love) and “yaoi.” “Boys love”/“BL” later made its way to fans, and the three terms have been used to distinguish differing degrees of sexual explicitness, with “shounen-ai” (the local spelling) referring to works with no sexual content and “yaoi” to works that are sexually explicit. Recently, however, most fans use “boys love” and “BL” to describe all such works. While BL is generally not intended to be a representation of actual gay men, its depictions of two male characters in love—and often engaging in sexual activities with one another—clearly runs counter to Indonesian cultural norms. First

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and foremost, homosexuality is widely considered a sin in Indonesia’s highly religious culture, dominated by Islam, which teaches that homosexuality is sinful. Moreover, its primary producers and consumers are women, who are not supposed to show an interest in sexuality, a taboo based on patriarchal values strongly linked to religion. Gita Pramudita Prameswari’s chapter in this volume addresses in depth the internal negotiations these fans commonly engage in resulting from the tension between their religious beliefs and their interest in BL. Such tension notwithstanding, most active BL fans continue to primarily access such content the way they likely first encountered it, through the Internet, allowing them to circumvent local cultural norms and regulations. Offline comic-related events such as Comifuro provide additional arenas in which creators and consumers who can afford to access them are able to share BL content in a safe space. As Camille Bacon-Smith and Henry Jenkins have shown of other cultural contexts, comic events can offer safe spaces for fans to form alternative communities that are separate from other areas of fans’ public and private lives, such as their families and workplaces.1 In the case of Indonesia, through the discretion of fans, whereby this content continues to fall under the radar, these events have become and continue to be safe spaces for BL fans in a society where it would otherwise be highly controversial to create, buy, and possess the object of their fannish desires. This chapter seeks to understand how individual fans within a fandom in Indonesia not only consume but actively produce products and participate in as well as organize events, thereby shaping the structure of their fandom. To understand how BL fandom in Indonesia operates, specifically practices whereby problematic content is able to “hide in plain sight,” I have conducted a comparative observational ethnographic study of Comifuro and the Japanese event it was modeled after, Comiket. Events selling dōjin (loosely, fan-produced) works in Japan, primarily dōjinshi (fanzines), are of course, different from their Indonesian counterparts, particularly when it comes to erotic works, including BL. In the case of Indonesia, the male homoerotic content intrinsic to BL runs counter to both Indonesian law and the country’s social mores; while pornography is regulated in Japan, those regulations are relatively lax, and homosexuality, while not often celebrated in Japan, is neither illegal nor, usually, harshly condemned. Furthermore, Jakarta’s Comifuro, first held in 2012, is a new event compared with Tokyo’s Comiket, which dates back to 1975:2 the Indonesian event lacks



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Comiket’s long traditions regarding management of participants and the kinds of content that may be displayed, bought, and sold. One result is that, in spite of Comifuro being modeled after Comiket, organizers and participating fans at Comifuro have created their own local methods of discretion regarding the visibility of potentially problematic content, including BL. After briefly discussing the background of Comifuro and what it has in common with Comiket, and continuing with an analysis of what Jenkins has famously labeled “participatory culture”3 at the event, this chapter then demonstrates how the location and nature of fan activities at the Indonesian event provide a space in which fans of BL are able to safely express their interest in the genre.

Comic Market as a Safe Space for BL Fans Even in contemporary Japan, according to Daisuke Okabe and Kimi Ishida, many BL fans are not comfortable publicly acknowledging their interest in the genre, or, in some cases, even in shōnen (boys) anime and manga in general.4 There are many events in Japan which provide safe spaces at which the predominantly female BL fans—who are often referred to and who refer to themselves as “fujoshi” (literally, “rotten girls,” rotten because they love BL)—can share their fan works, including BL-specific events. As noted above, however, Comiket is the largest fan event in Japan and likely the largest gathering of BL fans anywhere. Comifuro in Jakarta uses many characteristics of Comiket to build for local fans a safe space of their own. This section will look at how Comiket is able to offer a safe space to fans, to provide background for the next section, which examines Comifuro. Many researchers have discussed the role of Comiket in Japan vis-àvis amateur fan works, including BL. According to Hiroaki Tamagawa and James Welker, for instance, Comiket provides a space for selfexpression without the restrictions of the commercial publishing world, and, to that end, Fan-Yi Lam shows how the space “has shaped the most important trends defining the development of dōjinshi in Japan today.”5 Overall, many researchers agree that Comiket offers a safe space for the exploration of creative content with minimal limitations. That is precisely why the event has been a key site for the development and popularization of BL. The creation of dōjinshi in Comiket has allowed the exchange of creative ideas involving BL-related content that is largely out of the public gaze.

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And yet, the biannual Comiket is open to the general public, with no restrictions based on age or gender, though it is particularly popular among fans of anime, manga, and games. Prior to 2019 there were no entrance fees, so, to help defray expenses, organizers encouraged all attendees to purchase catalogs, which are sold online and at many bookstores in the Tokyo area and even further afield. Modest entrance fees were introduced in the run-up to the 2020 Olympic Games due to rising costs. While the organizers do not require buying a catalog to enter the event, many of the more than half a million attendees choose to purchase a catalog to navigate the approximately 35,000 “circles” (each of which may be an individual or group of content creators) selling fan goods across multiple enormous halls over three days.6 In spite of Comiket’s being open to the public and in spite of the crowds, many aspects of its rules and norms serve to protect the privacy of all participants. For instance, since 1996 the event has been held at Tokyo Big Sight convention center, in the somewhat out-of-the-way Odaiba district, which means that it is not an event someone is likely to randomly stumble upon. More importantly, Comiket has strict restrictions on photography within the event halls, requiring all individuals in a photograph consent to being photographed, including individuals whose faces would appear in the background. Further, members of circles usually identify themselves only with their circle names in the catalog and in their dōjinshi and other dōjin goods, giving dōjin creators a great deal of anonymity. In addition, face masks, commonly worn in Japan to prevent the spread of disease as well as to reduce allergy symptoms, make it easier for circle participants and regular attendees to obscure their faces should they so desire. The categorization of circles within Comiket also helps to obscure the nature of BL content from outsiders, though this effect is unintentional. With tens of thousands of circles, Comiket needs a strategy to categorize the circles so attendees can navigate the event easily. While BL is very common at Comiket, organizers do not place all BL content together in one category. Circles that produce derivative, rather than original, work are generally categorized into “genres” (janru) based on the anime, manga, and game series their work is based on, and derivative BL content tends to be widely dispersed among series with male protagonists, though the schedule is planned so that most BL, whether derivative or original, is sold on the same day. For example, one of the biggest genres at Comiket 93 (December 2017) was the recently popular



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mainstream TV anime series Osomatsu-san (Mr. Osomatsu), which filled up almost a whole hall among the total of the event’s nine halls on the BL day. Fans of BL and/or Osomatsu-san, as well as other avid consumers of anime, are aware that circles producing content in that genre mainly produce BL content. While there is one genre for original BL, most BL content falls under another genre, meaning attendees need to learn about the event norms on their own to find BL at the event. In her chapter in this volume, Kristine Michelle Santos describes this fan knowledge as “BL literacies,” essential for fans to locate and recognize as well as create intelligible BL. For instance, outsiders may be surprised to learn that, as suggested above, content based on popular shōnen manga and anime also tends to be overwhelmingly BL-themed. Under such circumstances, those unfamiliar with Comiket or the BL genre and its fandom are unlikely to find it easy to recognize Comiket as an event where women interested in male–male homoerotic content gather.

Collectively Creating a Safe Space for BL Fans at Comic Frontier Similar to Comiket, Comifuro is broadly focused on anime, manga, and game content. Circles at Comifuro use circle names or pseudonyms instead of the real names of individual circle members to identify themselves. However, unlike Comiket, Comifuro is not a massive event whose scale itself might overwhelm and thus discourage casual or curious passersby or non-fans from entering and possibly encountering controversial content. Furthermore, taking pictures within the event hall at Comifuro is not discouraged, making it possible for people to take pictures of creators’ faces without their consent, opening them to public exposure. It is wholly conceivable that someone might enter Comifuro, take offense at content depicting homosexuality or sexuality in general, and go to the event organizers or even to the authorities and insist it be censored or post photos online to publicly shame creators and fans. In this context it is crucial for event organizers as well as BL circle members and fans to find some way to create a safe space for creators and consumers of BL content. As the popularity of anime and manga in general has grown, BL content has, in recent years, gradually become a significant, if still small, part of the content available at comic events including Comifuro, which has thus far permitted its distribution. While, as Prameswari notes in her chapter, some within the Indonesian otaku community take offense

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at BL and, in the case of the Royal Boys Love Convention, attempted in 2017 to have it banned, circles and attendees at Comifuro whom I have approached have been aware that BL content is overlooked by most participants at this event, and they seem to find no compelling reason to prevent the content from being exhibited in the events. On the one hand, this demonstrates the strength of BL consumers and producers, despite their representing a minority within the anime and manga fan community. On the other hand, Comifuro organizers are also surely aware that if the general public were to become aware of the existence of the BL genre and its presence at the event, this content—which, as I have already noted, is inherently problematic in the context of Indonesia—would immediately lead to trouble for BL circles as well as for the event’s organizers, as illustrated by the negative reaction, noted above, against the Royal Boys Love Convention, which may be why, as of mid-2021, the event has not been held again, and the event’s Facebook group has been deleted. Unlike neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, there is no sodomy law specifically criminalizing homosexuality in Indonesia, but the government and religion play significant roles in spreading homophobia and censoring homosexual content with the intent of protecting the nation. Indeed, as Tom Boellstorff notes, the government sees homosexuality as a “threat” to the nation’s moral identity, while Baiden Offord observes that “sexual identity is placed well after the priorities of family, nation and Allah or Jesus, and has no explicit place in filial and social relations” in the country.7 In keeping with such beliefs, lawmakers such as Supiadin Aries Saputra have insisted that media censorship of content depicting homosexuality is necessary to prevent the normalization of the LGBT “lifestyle” in Indonesia, which they fear may “ruin the morality of the younger generation.”8 In Indonesia’s Pornography Law, pornography is sweepingly defined to encompass “pictures, sketches, illustrations, photos, writing, voice, sound, moving pictures, animation, cartoons, conversations, movements of the body, or other forms through a variety of communication media and/or performances in public which contain obscenity or sexual exploitation which violates the moral norms in society.”9 Note that the named items cover nearly all aspects of fan practices. There have also been repeated attempts to criminalize the depiction of homosexuality in terms broad enough to apply directly to BL, but such content is not currently illegal provided that sex is not explicitly depicted. Nevertheless, the contemporary



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political and cultural climate remains hostile to such content.10 Thus, in addition to policing anything that might be considered “pornography,” fan event organizers and participants work to minimize the visibility of BL content specifically. One very significant reason why Comifuro is a safe place for BL content is because the event is not a BL event, nor, unlike the Royal Boys Love Convention, is it advertised as such. Rather, Comifuro and similar conventions in Indonesia are promoted as general anime and manga events, with no mention of BL or any other controversial content likely to be present. In my own investigation of BL-related events in Indonesia, I have learned that finding events with BL content can be very difficult. It is not as simple as checking event websites or just conducting a web search. In general, the only way to learn which events have BL content is through word of mouth, accessing the right social media, or knowing where else to look online. At the time of the 2017 Comifuro described above, the event drew little attention from the public, so, likely, few outside of the fandom were aware of such an event focused on fan works. Even now that the event has drawn increasing media attention, learning what specifically will be available, including BL content, requires looking at the online catalog to find the “circle cuts” (small illustrations that represent the circle and its artwork). However, as Santos notes in her chapter, BL content has elements that are recognizable only to the fans, so that non-fans of the genre are likely to miss the visual cues in the circle cuts that allow fans to identify it. Moreover, most non-fan attendees are likely attending Comifuro merely to sate their curiosity about comic events or accompany their friends or family going to the event, and they are unlikely to have enough interest to view the online catalog or even awareness that the catalog exists. In short, those who might cause trouble for the event are unlikely to stumble upon indications of BL content or recognize it as such if they do. Poor management has also helped Comifuro, including its BL content, stay under the radar. In the case of the specific event described at the opening of this chapter, I myself experienced difficulty in attempting to find where it was being held within the Balai Kartika exhibition and convention center, the first time I attended the event, in September 2017. Neither Comifuro nor the center had set up signs outside to direct attendees to the event, providing no indication of even which of the two buildings attendees should enter. In my case, fortunately, I noticed that several people with anime- and manga-themed shirts and

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bags were walking toward the back of the building; I followed them, taking a chance that they would lead me in the correct direction. While attendees were waiting for the event to open, I had no idea where to wait because no one was forming a line; everyone was simply sitting on the stairs or on the ground near the entrance of the event. Because there were so few people waiting to get in—around thirty when I arrived— and even when the event was about to open, staff did not do a good job of organizing those waiting into a clear line, so the line itself probably did not attract much attention either. While the staff—and the line— was more organized at the August 2018 event I attended, the scale, location, and lack of prominent promotion of Comifuro continue to keep attention away from the event. The third factor keeping BL content from attracting attention is the unstructured arrangement of booths at Comifuro, and the way items are displayed at individual booths. At the event I have been describing, after paying the admission fee of 25,000 rupiah (approximately two US dollars), I entered the large, heavily air-conditioned hall to find an array of booths spread across the hall and a small stage on the far left. In contrast with Comiket and most events in Japan, Comifuro neither provides nor sells a printed catalog to guide attendees. And most attendees I observed seemed to have no particular destination in mind as they browsed the items available at the booths, one by one. A few individuals, however, walked more purposefully or even ran toward the booths they already knew had items they wanted to purchase, likely because they had checked the online catalog ahead of time. There were 450 circles at this particular event, so it would take a while for attendees to browse around all of the booths, should they wish to do so, or decide which items to buy. I noticed that only a few—perhaps just over 5 percent—of the circles were selling BL content, some of which were selling merchandise and doujin (also called doujinshi; the Indonesian fan label for dōjinshi) with erotic, even overtly sexual content. However, booths selling such merchandise and doujin did not really stand out among the hundreds of booths around them. At one booth, a young woman was selling many items containing BL imagery, including doujin, fan art prints in postcard and other sizes, key chains, and micro fiber eyeglasscleaning cloths and towels. Two of her key chains were erotic images of men in bondage. It would, of course, have been quite possible to miss these key chains among all the booths and all the merchandise on sale, and the flow of the crowd within the event. I asked the circle artist if it



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was alright to display these key chains so publicly, and she admitted that she hesitated at first, but her friends and fans convinced her not to be afraid to display them, and thus far no one had taken offense, so she had no reason to hide them. Another booth that captured my interest at Comifuro—and, no doubt, the interest of many others—was the September 2017 booth of well-known Indonesian artist Mazjojo. To BL fans in Indonesia, he is known as a BL artist. In Japan, however, since he distributes his work in spaces associated with “gay comics” (gei komikkusu or gei komi)—often called “bara” in English-speaking and other fandoms—he is associated with the gay-focused genre.11 His booth (fig. 10.1) was bigger than standard booths and was covered with BL art prints, BL goods such as buttons and key chains, and BL doujin. On the left side of the booth there

Figure 10.1. Photo of Mazjojo’s booth at Comifuro in September 2017. (Photo by author)

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was an almost two-meter-high poster promoting a soon-to-be-released BL-themed computer game made by Mazjojo. Since the presence of BL content was so obvious in this booth, I asked Mazjojo why he was comfortable displaying such content so openly.12 He explained that the event was not particularly public, and he did not feel that anyone at the event was likely to report his art and get him in trouble. Looking at the area around his booth, it was clear that attendees in general either ignored his booth or eagerly came up to it. It seems likely that none of the attendees, regardless of their feelings about his work, had any desire to create trouble for the artist, thereby also bringing trouble to the event itself. The entrance fee of 25,000 rupiah, noted above, is not a small sum for many attendees, and high enough to discourage most casual passersby from wandering in. And for attendees who paid this sum for the purpose of taking part in this fan experience, causing trouble at the event would probably be the last thing on their minds. Several participants I spoke to at the August 2018 Comifuro, however, expressed a fear that Comifuro is becoming more public and less safe for artists to display their BL content openly on their booths.13 According to circle artist “Mizo” and her companions, “Tia” and “Gita,” the number of attendees who have minimal to no knowledge of BL content has increased recently.14 They expressed the belief that Comifuro remains safe for the time being since, as Mizo pointed out, attendees are almost entirely members of the fan community, but Mizo noted that “orang awam” (“commoners,” i.e., outsiders), such as the parents of kids who visit the event, may cause trouble by raising a fuss over both the homosexual and the sexual content or unknowingly purchase BL doujin or other goods for their children if the children ask them to, only discovering the nature of the items after leaving the event. Gita noted that media coverage of the event has been increasing recently as well, with the coverage not always indicating that the event is anime-related, just that the work of young local artists will be on sale. “Now if people come with that lens and see BL that will be a disaster,” Gita added. When I asked them how the comic event could be improved in order to provide a space that protects them from negative public exposure, Mizo explained that keeping the event limited to a community of mutually supportive fans has helped, but with more orang awam knowing about the event and even coming in, organizers should request that circles seal their “R18” (restricted to those eighteen and older, i.e., pornographic) works to prevent those outsiders



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from accidentally looking at them. Gita added that this would help keep the event safe for children too. If, however, nothing is done and BL is exposed to the wrong people, it could harm the entire manga and anime fan community. The three young women expressed the belief that the kind of people who would judge BL negatively and act against it are people who would not understand the specific genre and its fans. Such people would likely link it to the whole anime and manga community, and thus if BL content at Comifuro were reported to the authorities, the authorities might not just explicitly ban BL content at events but even go as far as banning anime and manga events altogether. It is worth noting that these women do not suggest banning BL content. Banning BL alone would not solve the potential problem at Comifuro and similar events. When speaking of the importance of the fan community, Mizo mentioned both yuri, depicting female–female intimacy, and hentai, a label widely used outside Japan, including in Indonesia, to refer to pornography in manga, anime, and games, particularly heterosexual content. Because of their depiction of homosexuality or sexual explicitness, both are, like BL, highly problematic in conservative Indonesian society. Mizo explained that fans of these genres “all support each other.” It would, of course, be possible for Comifuro to ban all three genres to protect the larger event. Indeed, they may do so at some point, but for now, organizers seem content to allow these fans to participate as members of the broader fan community. In sum, participating in the broadly themed Comifuro, where BL-themed works and merchandise are scattered throughout the somewhat disorganized event, has helped the Indonesian BL fan community hide BL content in plain sight. However, if BL happens to increase in popularity at Comifuro, and/or if the event attracts more orang awam, it will likely become increasingly difficult to keep BL content under wraps. Should this happen, the fan community will need to find new ways to avoid trouble from the general public and even from the broader otaku community in order to maintain a safe space to sustain their fandom in the long term. Comic events in Tokyo and Jakarta provide a platform that allows BL content to be shared among fans while avoiding potential trouble even when this sharing occurs in public spaces. Comiket, in Tokyo, takes place at a site that is inconvenient to visit and, at the same time, takes

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place on a scale and with an internal fan culture that can make it intimidating for casual attendees. Furthermore, the use of circle names and pseudonyms and the banning of picture taking in most contexts help protect fans’ privacy. At its counterpart in Jakarta, Comifuro, the use of circle names and pseudonyms and current lack of visibility similarly helps BL fans maintain a measure of privacy. It remains to be seen, however, how long these fans will be able to keep their fan practices and BL works themselves from being subject to public scrutiny. Paradoxically, as the size of the BL fandom grows in scale and increases in visibility, the danger of its coming under attack and being forced to go underground will increase. Moreover, an attack on BL fandom may harm anime and manga fans in general, the same community that is currently providing BL fans a safe space in which to celebrate their love of boys love.

Notes  1.  Camille Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); Henry Jenkins, “‘Strangers No More We Sing’: Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction,” in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, ed. Lisa A. Lewis (London: Routledge, 1992). 2.  On the history of Comiket, see Shimotsuki Takanaka, Komikku māketto sōseiki (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Shuppan, 2008). 3. On participatory culture, see chap. 1 in Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992). 4.  Daisuke Okabe and Kimi Ishida, “Making Fujoshi Identity Visible and Invisible,” in Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World, ed. Mizuki Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). 5.  Hiroaki Tamagawa, “Comic Market as Space for Self-Expression in Otaku Culture,” in Ito, Okabe, and Tsuji, Fandom Unbound; James Welker, “A Brief History of Shōnen’ai, Yaoi, and Boys Love,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 54; Fan-Yi Lam, “Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture,” Mechademia 5 (2010): 233.



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6.  Due to construction at Tokyo Big Sight in preparation for the 2020 Olympics, in December 2019 Comiket expanded from three to four days, resulting in a sudden dramatic increase in the number of regular attendees. See “Komikku Māketto 97 afutā repōto,” Comiket, April 11, 2020, https:// www.comiket.co.jp/info-a/C97/C97AfterReport.html. Both 2020 Comiket events and the summer 2021 event were cancelled owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. 7. Tom Boellstorff, “The Emergence of Political Homophobia in Indonesia: Masculinity and National Belonging,” in Homophobias: Lust and Loathing across Time and Space (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Baiden Offord, Homosexual Rights as Human Rights: Activism in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), 145. 8. Nurul Fitri Ramadhani, “House Agrees to Total Ban on LGBT Content,” Jakarta Post, September 27, 2017, https://www.thejakartapost .com/news/2017/09/28/house-agrees-total-ban-lgbt-content.html. 9.  Quoted in Helen Pausacker, “Hot Debates: A Law on Pornography Still Divides the Community,” Inside Indonesia, December 14, 2008, https:// www.insideindonesia.org/hot-debates-2; see also Helen Pausacker, “AsiaPacific: Indonesia’s New Pornography Law: Reform Does Not Necessarily Lead to More Liberal Attitudes to Morality and Censorship,” Alternative Law Journal 34, no. 2 (2009). 10. For a recent example of intolerance of the LGBT community among law enforcement in Jakarta, see Alya Nurbaiti, “Police Lambasted for Targeting LGBT Community in Raid in Jakarta,” Jakarta Post, Septem­ ber 5, 2020, https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/09/05/police -lambasted-for-targeting-lgbt-community-in-raid-in-jakarta.html. 11. On gay comics/bara, see Thomas Baudinette, “An Evaluation of Physicality in the Bara Manga of Bádi Magazine,” in Manga Vision: Cultural and Communicative Perspectives, ed. Sarah Passfield-Neofitou and Cathy Sell (Clayton, Vic., Australia: Monash University Publishing, 2016). 12. Mazjojo, interview with author, Comifuro, Jakarta, September 1, 2017. This interview and the interview referred to below were conducted in Bahasa Indonesia and translated by the author. 13. Mizo, Tia, and Gita, interview with author, Comifuro, Jakarta, August 19, 2018. 14.  For the purpose of privacy, “Mizo” requested to be referred to by her circle name, i.e., “Mizo.” “Tia” and “Gita” are the pseudonyms these individuals requested be used for this interview; neither is an active member of “Mizo,” but both help out with sales at events if they are available.

chapter 11

Dissonant Passions Indonesian Boys Love Fans’ Identity Negotiation and Perspectives on LGBT Issues Gita Pramudita Prameswari

It was in September 2017, not even a week after the amateur comic event Comic Frontier 9 was held at the Kartika Expo Center in Jakarta, when I received information from a friend about the Royal Boys Love Convention, a boys love (BL) fan gathering to be held later that month at a smaller venue in the same city. The event offered drama CD listening, BL character cosplayer photoshoots, a BL goods auction, a dance session, and mini “daring” games between cosplayers, including a bondage technique competition and guessing a partner’s body parts through touch. However, the event was in danger of being cancelled after word spread to the wider otaku community. Some accused the event of promoting LGBT culture and even started a petition to cancel it. The pushback against the event may be why, as of late 2021, there has since been no similar event held in Indonesia. The anti-LGBT stance of the BL event’s detractors is rooted in a broader religious and moral discourse against LGBT rights and visibility that maintains overwhelming influence in Indonesia, occasionally sparking major national debates, such as had occurred earlier in the decade. As the near cancellation of the Royal Boys Love Convention and lack of similar BL events thereafter illustrate, the Indonesian otaku ­community has long been caught in the tension between their religion and the “sinful” media they consume, whether BL, yuri (depicting female ­same-sex relationships), rorikon (depicting prepubescent girls in sexual situations), or other genres with sexual content. A lot of anime and manga fans in Indonesia may love such genres, but the genres, particularly BL, also frequently provoke religious and moral debates among

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otaku. Even among the BL fans themselves, their fandom of BL is widely felt to be “shameful.” And yet, while Indonesia’s highly religious culture hinders the ability of BL fans to be open about their fandom among the public at large, it does not keep the fans from engaging in activities such as participating in comic conventions and other gatherings. The interesting contradiction between the recent rise of anti-LGBT discourse in public and the rising confidence of BL fans raises important questions about how these BL fans link their fandom to LGBT issues and how these fans’ complex identities reflect their feelings about the LGBT community. It is important to note here that while BL focuses on male same-sex relationships, the issues that BL draws attention to among both fans and detractors in Indonesia—and elsewhere, as evidenced by other chapters in this volume—extend to the LGBT community more broadly. Given this overlap, after introducing recent debates on LGBT issues and the growing popularity of BL in Indonesia, this chapter explores two types of Indonesian BL fans: those who have difficulties relating their identity as fans of BL to LGBT issues due to their religious and national identity, and those who are attempting to link the current public discussion of LGBT issues to their interest in BL. I will consider the first category of fans by drawing on in-depth interviews I conducted in 2017, and the second through an exploration of the interaction between the authors of BL stories set in Indonesia and their readers on Wattpad, a Canada-based writing platform for amateurs to publish original or fan fiction that is popular in Indonesia. While both religious belief and the Indonesian national consciousness foster a distancing in BL fans’ perceptions between fictional BL worlds and real-life LGBT issues, the latter category of fans suggest the possibility that this gap may be closing.

Anti-LGBT Rhetoric in Indonesia Contrary to popular understanding abroad, Indonesia is not a constitutionally secular state but rather declares the existence of “the One and Only God” in its Constitution. While the Constitution grants citizens the freedom to practice the religion of their own choosing, this is frequently forgotten in practice. Indonesia has six official religions—Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism— though the vast majority (roughly 87 percent) of the population are Muslims, while most of the remainder are Protestants (7 percent) or

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Catholics (3 percent).1 In both Islam, which holds overwhelming influence on national morals, and Christianity, homosexuality is generally regarded as forbidden because it challenges God’s order. Such an understanding is reflected in a 2013 survey about Indonesian attitudes toward homosexuality that suggests 93 percent of Indonesians believe that homosexuality is morally unacceptable.2 In January 2016, the debate over LGBT issues came to a head after a community-based organization called the Support Group and Research Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) at the prestigious University of Indonesia was accused of promoting LGBT lifestyles despite its only providing counseling for issues related to sexuality.3 The university’s administration later removed it from the student organization list, but by that point the impact of the scandal had gone national, becoming the focus of discussion on television, at public meetings, and online, leading to negative repercussions on the LGBT community itself. For instance, Pesantren Waria—a “boarding school” for waria, or transgender people—in Yogyakarta closed down due to protests by an Islamic activist group,4 the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission passed a rule prohibiting any normalizing representation of LGBT lives on television,5 and several groups proposed to the Constitutional Court a review of the laws on homosexuality and nonmarital sex that might, in effect, criminalize the LGBT community.6

The Popularity of BL in the “Religious” State Despite the pervasiveness and, as we have just seen, the effectiveness of anti-LGBT discourse, BL fans in Indonesia have managed to survive— and the fate of the Royal Boys Love Convention notwithstanding—even become more confident in recent years about displaying their interest in this media at public events. BL has never been commercially published or circulated through formal commercial channels in Indonesia itself, but there is no doubt that there are thousands if not tens of thousands of young female fans of the genre, which seems to have been introduced to manga and anime fans through circulated fan scanlations on the Internet in the late 1990s and now at fan conventions, as is discussed by Kania Arini Sukotjo in her chapter in this volume. Since around 2012, the number of conventions offering spaces for amateur creators has been rapidly increasing, including Anime Festival Asia Indonesia (AFAID), massive in scale; Comic Frontier (Comifuro),



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examined by Sukotjo; and OTPcon, focused on “one true pairings” (OTPs), that is, fans’ favorite relationships. And despite AFAID’s official prohibition on selling homosexuality-related material at the event, BL-related doujin (fanzines, Indonesian for the Japanese word dōjinshi) and merchandise are almost certain to be seen there, much of which is locally produced (fig. 11.1). Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto argues that BL fans in highly religious countries like Indonesia are more likely to remain undiscovered due to the foreignness and relative rareness of BL,7 leaving it unfamiliar enough to most members of society to “hide in plain sight,” as Sukotjo describes it in this volume. In other words, because most members of that society have never themselves really engaged with any texts representing homosexuality before, even if someone stumbles upon BL circulating among fans, they will most likely not be able to recognize the “abnormality” in it. In addition, circulated BL material usually comes in the form of anime and manga, which for the majority of the population looks very foreign and harmless—the latter because it is primarily considered a media consumed by children—and, thus, unworthy of investigation. However, I would argue that the “security” Indonesia’s religious culture has provided for the fans is slowly being challenged by the intense debate about Indonesia’s LGBT community initially sparked in early 2016, as described above. The majority of the society feels the urge to take a side in this debate because the circulating discourses involve religious perceptions, but how about BL fans themselves? The key question is, will the difference in their media consumption affect their opinion toward the issue? Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin argues that BL fans in Southeast Asia— specifically, the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia—are inclined to draw connections between the BL they consume and sometimes produce themselves with real-life problems regarding homosexuality due to the pervasive intolerance of homosexuality around them.8 In other words, fans in Southeast Asia are more likely to consider the appropriateness of their interest—an interest that seems to run counter to the dominant social mores and also their own religious beliefs, especially in the case of Indonesia, where BL, an imported genre that is not commercially published there, has not been localized in order to make it more socially acceptable. It would not be surprising, then, if fans experience psychological conflicts due to their engagement with this seemingly foreign media. Although Bauwens-Sugimoto suggests that only highly

Figure 11.1. Cover of Indonesian BL doujin titled If It’s Not You, part 1, by Etansel & Bekyunn (2018). (Courtesy of Etansel & Bekyunn)



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religious fans experience such conflicts, she does not clarify whether an individual’s degree of religiosity also affects their opinion about LGBT issues outside the world of BL.9 Fermin, however, argues that among BL fans in Indonesia, due to the threat from the nation’s conservative society, many choose to publicly remain “apolitical” and publicly espouse “heteronormative” values.10 Therefore, fans in Southeast Asia might be supportive of or reject the LGBT community, but, either way, they do not necessarily reveal these beliefs. Although they might often question their own positions on LGBT issues, as Fermin has stated, Indonesian BL fans are still more interested in BL for its entertainment value than for any politics that might be tied to it.

Research Methodology In April 2017, I conducted in-depth interviews in Indonesia with eleven Indonesian fans through Internet phone calls, and for this chapter I have translated excerpts into English. All the informants are my acquaintances, with some of whom I became close due to our shared interest in BL, while others only confessed their love of BL after we got to know each other well enough. Since they know me personally, they all felt safe being interviewed over the phone and even gave permission to be recorded. These individuals were all in their twenties and most of them were fourth-year university students or had freshly entered the workforce at the time of the interviews. To protect their identities, I use pseudonyms when referring to each interviewee. In the interviews I touched upon many topics ranging from their initial encounter with BL, to the connection between BL and their own sexuality, to their experience with anti-LGBT discourse; however, in this chapter I focus on their experience as Indonesian BL fans in the context of their highly religious culture. Since the interview results show these fans’ tendency to exclude LGBT discussion from their fan activities, below I juxtapose the interviews with my observations of Indonesian BL authors and readers on the aforementioned Wattpad platform. On this platform, there are thousands of original works of BL fiction by Indonesian authors set in Indonesia, which, hereafter, I will call “Indonesian BL stories.” Some Indonesian BL raises issues related to the LGBT community’s struggles in the context of the country’s highly religious society, prompting fans to reflect thereon, as I will discuss below.

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I should note that my two-pronged focus here is not necessarily representative of the experiences of all Indonesian BL fans, but the fans and discourses I discuss below are indeed representative of the segments of Indonesian BL fandom with which I am familiar.

Tolerating LGBT people but Not Accepting LGBT Values Prior to their exposure to BL, many of the individuals with whom I spoke were not even familiar with homosexuality. BL was the first media that made them aware of the existence of male–male relationships and of people who make and enjoy fictional representations thereof. Nevertheless, my informants who confessed that they were shocked by the content were not necessarily appalled by the homosexual relationships themselves but rather by the sexual vulgarity of the works they read. While a feeling of guilt might arise from deliberate engagement with materials that run counter to their values, these readers’ lack of familiarity with BL and with homosexuality may have prevented this. That is, at least initially they were not seeking depictions conflicting with their values. However, the necessity of exhibiting dignity and decency (especially for females) is ingrained in Indonesian children. As a result, suddenly finding sexual content in something they are reading can be quite shocking. Although these fans might not have thought much about homosexuality when they were teenagers, all of them agreed that society does not tolerate it. Half of these fans spent their youth in religious schools—some strict, some lenient—but at some point in their education, they heard anti-LGBT messages based on religious values. When asked about their reaction to such messages, many of them told me they did not really remember because the issue did not seem to be a big deal at that time, nor did they think it related to them in any way. Fans who identify as members of the LGBT community, however, might not easily forget such messages. One informant, who identifies as transgender and possibly queer, confessed that because of such ideas taught them by their school and society, they ended up hating themselves until they finally left Indonesia to pursue a university education overseas. They also regarded BL as a form of media into which they could project themselves. Intriguingly, most of the individuals with whom I spoke, however, agreed that BL itself has had little direct impact on their own



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perspectives about LGBT issues. To be sure, it did give them an awareness about the existence of homosexuality and, to some extent, provoked them to question their own religious values. But what has most shaped their perspectives on the LGBT community and LGBT rights, they indicated, have been discussions with other people, both online and offline—a point to which I will return in my discussion of Wattpad. Nevertheless, some of them also expressed that reading BL gives them a feeling of emotional attachment to homosexual couples, which, I would argue, is connected with why these fans finally decided to take a “neutral” stance toward LGBT issues—neutral in the sense of not engaging with LGBT issues even though they might not feel accepting toward nonheteronormative, noncisgender people in the real world. Regardless, through emotional involvement with male–male relationships in BL, these fans are able to feel sympathy toward same-sex couples and recognize a certain common humanity. Vinda (twenty-three years old), a female Muslim working at a finance company, told me she believes that being homosexual or transgender is a sin in Islam and that LGBT people will not go to heaven after they die. But then she added, “But what can we do? If that is how things are, we can’t do anything, right?” Like Vinda, other women I spoke with agreed that being LGBT is a sin according to their religion but demonstrated a lack of certainty about whether it is truly sinful. Although several individuals showed support for the LGBT community, most either did not support the community or felt unable to express their support. For these women, the issue did not seem to directly affect them, and while they did not support violence against the LGBT community, they did not think there was anything they could do about that either. As we can see in statements by Mira and Dwi, their views sometimes exhibit significant contradictions: I think homosexuality is a sin if you do not try to change it. Like free sex, for example. If you keep doing it because you are following your desires, then you are sinning. More than the status of being “homosexual,” I think what can be considered a sin is how you act upon it. If it is regarding sexual orientation itself, I would not make a fuss about it. If they are talking about gay rights, I would keep my silence since it does not concern my life. I am neutral. (Mira, twenty-five years old, female Muslim)

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Dwi had this to say: Regarding real LGBT people, I do not want to interfere with their lives. Their lives are theirs. But I am one of those typical Indonesians who are “okay” with other people being LGBT, but it would be a different story if it is my family. But I disagree when people are disrespecting them. I have a gay superior and I do not like how my co-workers sometimes treat him. Well, but still, I was always taught by my father that [being LGBT] is wrong, so as long as I still follow my religion, I would not [support them].” (Dwi, twenty-three years old, female Muslim) As I noted above, the fans with whom I spoke tended to be ignorant about LGBT issues when they were teenagers. But when it became a topic of national discussion, as with everything else, they began to form opinions. By that time, they were older and would have met more people from diverse backgrounds at their universities and workplaces. However, we should remember that for some of these women, LGBT issues were still unfamiliar by the time they were young adults and the national debate on LGBT issues came to the fore. One of them even said that she did not really know about LGBT people in Indonesia or how significant the topic had been in public discourse. While my interviews did not provide me enough information to corroborate it, I suspect that the gap between liking BL and having an interest in LGBT issues has something to do with what kind of BL content these fans have been exposed to, including where BL stories are set and how that relates to their apparent realness, as well as the context of their engagement, whether at a fan convention, online, or elsewhere. All those with whom I spoke are fans of Japanese BL manga, although some said they had also started to read South Korean BL web­ toons (online digital comics), discussed by Jungmin Kwon elsewhere in this volume. None of them went as far as to claim that BL is uniquely Japanese or only belongs in a Japanese cultural context, but they did indicate that they thought it would be awkward if BL narratives were set in Indonesia. They are used to associating BL content with Japan and assume the male–male relations depicted in the genre are more likely to be consonant with reality in its country of origin rather than in their own country. Most of them, however, are aware that even in Japan itself, the representation of homosexuality in BL does not represent



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real life for gay men in Japan—a noteworthy contrast with the gay young men from China discussed in this volume by Thomas Baudinette who believed that Japan was a “gay paradise.” While several informants stated that even though they find the idea of BL set in Indonesian context unimaginable, they would like to read such a work if the story is believable. Most, however, are, like Vinda and Mira, resistant to the very idea of Indonesian BL stories: I think of homosexuality as a sin, but reading BL is not because it is fiction. Unless the BL is porn . . . but since reading porn is our [sexual] necessity, it is fine to sin like this. Maybe I can enjoy it [without apprehension] because I cannot relate to the characters and the world in it. If you ask me if I would want to read Indonesian BL or not, I think I would not want to read it. It would be weird. (Vinda) And Mira said: When I was in Japan, I saw that society did not make a fuss about gay people. Therefore, I think BL was able to become a big industry in Japan because society does not try to reject it. So, I think it is acceptable for me to enjoy Japanese BL because, well, it is part of their culture. But if we tried to make it in [Japanese] BL way but in an Indonesian context, I would not want to read it! Because Indonesian culture is not like that. These BL readers’ discomfort with BL set in Indonesia resonates with early Japanese BL, which was generally set in Europe to make it easier narratively to violate Japanese sexual norms, both regarding open homosexuality and girl readers taking an interest in it and regarding the taking an interest in sexuality at all.11 The Western settings in early Japanese BL were far from adolescent Japanese female readers both in space and time, an unknown world distant enough from their own to free them to fantasize about male–male relationships. Such a phenomenon is probably also at work among international BL fans, especially in but not limited to highly religious or otherwise conservative countries like Indonesia. Even in relatively liberal Taiwan, the foreign setting of Japan seems to have made male–male romance in BL initially easier to accept. Moreover, drawing on research from the early 2000s, Fran

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Martin describes how the Japaneseness of BL was part of the genre’s appeal to female fans, and even if they recognized that it was fantasy it was imbued for them “with a flavor . . . that relates in some sense to real-world Japan.”12 Crucially, the layers of foreignness to a female fan in Taiwan, or elsewhere, of a Japanese boy in Japan offer an important space for fans to reflect on and negotiate their own social position in their local community. Therefore, rather than the final phase of BL consumption, for these fans and fans elsewhere it might be an early step on the way to a new state of consciousness regarding local and global LGBT issues as they begin to imagine BL narratives set in their own culture. To be able to realistically transport a BL story to the Indonesian context, one would have to acknowledge in the narrative deeply ingrained religiosity and morals impossible to be ignored. I suspect this disconnect between being a BL fan and developing an opinion about LGBT issues happened because there are massive geographical and, more importantly, cultural gaps between what readers see in BL and what they experience in their day-to-day lives. It may be easy for BL fans to imagine homosexuality in Japan, however different it may be in reality from how BL manga depicts it, but for these fans to imagine homosexuality—or LGBT existence more broadly—in Indonesia is something that is relatively difficult for the fans with whom I spoke. Indonesian BL fans might be more aware of LGBT issues than a typical Indonesian, but for most this awareness is probably focused more on LGBT issues in a global context that might not include their own society. The increasing popularity of BL stories set in Indonesia published on Wattpad—which might be seen, in part, as the result of years of imagining LGBT experience through Japanese BL—may be a big step toward Indonesian fans more fully engaging with local LGBT issues.

Integrating Religiosity, Nationality, and Fan Identity Wattpad is probably the biggest online platform for writers in Indonesia, and for years it has given birth to many hit writers who later debuted as professional novelists. Erisca Febriani, the most popular writer writing in Bahasa Indonesia, is followed by more than 348,000 users and Dear Nathan, her most popular work, has had over 33 million hits since it was published on the platform in 2015 and was adapted into a live-action movie with the same title in 2017. Romance novels appear to be the



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most popular category on Wattpad in Bahasa Indonesia. As of August 2020, there were more than 384,000 Bahasa Indonesian stories in the category, followed by teen fiction with 144,000 stories. Most BL stories on Wattpad are listed under those two tag categories. BL stories, particularly sexually explicit ones, are also tagged as “yaoi,” another common label for BL, with 31,900 stories to date; “boyxboy,” with 13,700 stories; or “boyslove,” with 15,500 stories. Despite the writers tagging their stories with “yaoi” or “boyslove,” a lot of the stories by Indonesian writers are set not in Japan but in North America, Europe, China, and South Korea—as well as, as already noted, Indonesia. And yet, BL stories by Indonesian writers set in Indonesia have similarities in plot and character types with BL by Indonesian writers set in Japan; some of the cover images of Indonesian BL stories even use illustrations from Japanese manga despite being set in Indonesia. The stories usually revolve around beautiful young men, some with references to generic BL elements such as the use of seme/uke (top/ bottom) terms from Japan and the description of romantic male–male relationships as love between two men without regard to gender rather than labelling them “homosexual” relationships. However, Indonesian BL stories that focus on “gay” men’s lives and struggles also occupy a prominent position on Wattpad, which probably has something to do with how Wattpad itself openly supports LGBT issues. Wattpad even has an official account focused on holding a writing contest and archiving LGBT works called “LGBTQIAP+” (@lgbtq), which has also led to an official account handled by the Indonesian Wattpad Ambassador called “LGBTQ+ Indonesia” (@LGBTQ-ID). Although not as popular as heterosexual romance writers, these Indonesian BL writers have a large enough fan base to sell their self-­ published novels periodically. It should be noted that, in general, publishers in Indonesia will not publish stories positively depicting homosexual romance; hence, many writers find it easier to print and sell such books themselves. Usually, they are sold online, while a few authors sell their fiction at conventions. Among the most popular novels are Indonesian BL stories with narratives that revolve around real social issues such as conflicts involving religious communities and AIDS. For instance, kincirmainan’s Senna, an ongoing religious Indonesian BL story that has been read on Wattpad more than 485,000 times as of August 2020 and has been released in print form by the author multiple times, depicts a devout Muslim man falling

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in love with an openly gay young man after the devout man’s divorce. Not only does the protagonist have to face an internal struggle over the conflict between his own same-sex desire and his religious beliefs condemning homosexuality, but he must also deal with judgment from his family. Other popular BL novels by different writers revolve around other religious topics such as love between gay Muslims and Christians or gay relationships in pesantren (boarding schools). Perhaps surprisingly, the religious BL stories also include teachings about Islam such as Koranic verses or the Prophet Muhammad’s Hadith (records of his acts and sayings), which make the stories realistic and, thus, more relatable for Muslim readers. The writers of such stories are very aware that the fusion of religion and gay topics might offend many people; hence they always provide warnings in the description. For instance, one female writer constantly reminds her readers, “The gay characters are religious. Beware!” giving the impression that many other Indonesian BL stories feature characters who are not religious or are narratives in which religion is not broached in spite of the context. One author of stories about gay relationships in pesantren wrote in a note on a chapter that was later deleted along with the note that she had received private messages from readers who experienced or knew someone who experienced the same thing. In comments on her stories some readers praise the author’s detailed references to Islamic teachings, while some others compliment her for her courage to speak about something taboo. One reader commented about the last chapter of one story that “there will always be something like this [that is, gay relationships] among us. It is the truth. This story is interesting because it does not lie. There are many religious people who do what is forbidden. Only the Prophets could be perfect, humans are not.” However, the author has also received negative comments and accusations of blasphemy from Muslims who do not agree that gays can exist in such Islamic institutions. On at least one occasion the author countered such accusations through a long explanation of why she chose to write about this issue. In addition to providing such relatable local BL contents that have reached many readers, the Wattpad platform allows readers to connect fiction and reality by discussing the connection with the writers and other users. While, according to Peiti Wang in this volume, reading BL has moved many Taiwanese BL fans to be openly supportive of the LGBT community, it is not clear yet if a significant number of Indonesian BL fans have become more concerned about LGBT issues



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due to reading BL. However, as I have already suggested, given the seemingly unstoppable popularity of such controversial stories among Indonesian fans combined with the ongoing discussion among these fans discussed above, BL fans becoming more active in LGBT issues in Indonesia seems increasingly possible.

In Indonesia today, as I have shown above, many BL fans remain engaged in a rather passive struggle between their interest in BL and their religious beliefs. While some deliberately distance their consumption of BL from LGBT issues, others take a more neutral stance even as they exhibit sympathy toward both imagined male–male couples and members of the LGBT community. However, among a certain segment of the Indonesian BL fan community, a new phenomenon has appeared to slowly introduce a new element to what seems an inherently unstable situation. In the Indonesian Wattpad scene, through the mushrooming of Indonesian BL stories, fans are being given increasing opportunities to connect with BL characters who are, for many, easier to relate to than Japanese characters. And they are being given the opportunity to discuss these stories with the authors and other Indonesian fans. The appearance of such BL stories is helping some readers imagine the realness and closeness of LGBT issues to their daily lives. However, since LGBT issues have become increasingly visible and controversial in Indonesia in recent years, spreading awareness and information about LGBT issues through Indonesian BL stories might become more dangerous in the future. Echoing Wang’s observations about Taiwan, a small but possibly increasing number of BL fans in Indonesia hope to incorporate their fan identity with actual activism in support of the LGBT community, but the majority still prioritize protecting their safe place for fantasizing. Thus, among BL fans in Indonesia, we can see dissonance both at the individual level—in the conflicts fans often feel between their religious beliefs and their passion for BL—and among the fans as a whole—in the kinds of BL that they are passionate about.

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Notes  1. Statistics Indonesia, “Population by Region and Religion,” Sensus Penduduk 2010, http://sp2010.bps.go.id/index.php/site/tabel?tid=321. 2.  Pew Research Center, “The Global Divide on Homosexuality,” Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, June 4, 2013, http://www.pew global.org/2013/06/04/the-global-divide-on-homosexuality/. 3.  Liza Yosephine, “A Portrait of a Gay Indonesian,” Jakarta Post, May 16, 2016, http://www.thejakartapost.com/longform/2016/05/16/a-portrait -of-a-gay-indonesian.html. 4. Bambang Muryanto, “Yogyakarta Transgender Islamic Boarding School Shut Down,” Jakarta Post, February 26, 2016, http://www.thejakar tapost.com/news/2016/02/26/yogyakarta-transgender-islamic-boarding -school-shut-down.html. 5.  Kyle Night, “Dispatches: Indonesia Censors LGBT Radio and TV,” Human Rights Watch, February 16, 2016, https://www.hrw.org/news/2016 /02/16/dispatches-indonesia-censors-lgbt-radio-and-tv. 6. Linawati Sidarto, “Feminism in Indonesia under Siege by Muslim Conservatives,” Jakarta Post, March 8, 2017, http://www.thejakartapost .com/life/2017/03/08/feminism-in-indonesia-under-siege-by-muslim -conservatives.html. 7.  Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Negotiating Religious and Fan Identities: ‘Boys’ Love’ and Fujoshi Guilt,” The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Mark McLelland (London: Routledge, 2017), 191. 8. Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin, “Uncovering Hidden Transcripts of Resistance of Yaoi and Boys Love Fans in Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines: Critiquing Gender and Sexual Orders within Global Flows of Japanese Popular Culture,” Ph.D. diss., Osaka University, 2014, 171. 9.  Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Negotiating Religious and Fan Identities,” 193. 10.  Fermin, “Uncovering Hidden Transcripts,” 171. 11.  James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love in Shôjo Manga,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 3 (2006). 12.  Fran Martin, “Girls Who Love Boys’ Love: BL as Goods to Think with in Taiwan (with a Revised and Updated Coda),” Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 209.

chapter 12

BL Coupling in a Different Light Filipino Fans Envisioning an Alternative Model of Intimacy Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin

Much of the attention surrounding scholarship on subcultures and fan studies is focused on the re-imaginations of current social landscapes that these groups offer. Early in the development of the field of fan studies, for instance, Henry Jenkins demonstrated in his study of Star Trek fan fiction writers that fans, at times, re-interpret and rewrite the original text based on their own social experience, in order to make it more responsive to their needs.1 James C. Scott explains that subcultures produce “hidden transcripts,” discourses that contain not only negative social commentary of subordinate social groups but also the alternative worlds and social structures that they imagine.2 Turning to the specific field of boys love (BL) studies, Andrea Wood points out that BL manga’s global circulation has created and facilitated a vast field of discourse, as well as given rise to a subversive and fundamentally queer “global counterpublic.”3 In this context, it is not surprising that one of the key issues that cross-cultural BL research seeks to address is how the genre and its fan communities re-imagine and influence constructions of gender, such as masculinity, in various sociocultural contexts. Other chapters in this collection, those by Aerin Lai, Kazumi Nagaike, and Wei Wei, that explore masculinities in the context of BL fandom focus on male consumers (homosexual and heterosexual) and the ways BL affects the sexual fantasies of these consumers as well as transforms gender norms for young men. This chapter, however, will focus on female fans in the Philippines, and how their readings of male–male relationships in the genre suggest an alternative model of not just masculinity, but also intimate relationships.

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In particular, I will discuss how Filipino fans read male–male relationships in BL as what Scott calls in his work “symbolic inversions,”4 or any symbolic behavior that subverts or challenges existing cultural values, ideals, and norms. I will show how the playful texts and fan activities of the Filipino “yaoi/BL” subculture contain hidden transcripts of resistance through symbolic inversions, particularly fans’ re-imaginations of the nature and conduct of personal, intimate relationships. Filipino fans generally use the terms “yaoi” and “BL” almost interchangeably to refer to any manga, anime, or fan-derivative works with male homoerotic themes. The main difference lies in the level of sexual explicitness: the former usually refers to sexually explicit works, while the latter is used to refer to more romantic stories, a distinction that has commonly been made by English-speaking fans in general. There are also some fans who, somewhat similar to Japan, use yaoi to refer to derivative works and BL to refer to commercially published original works. However, in this chapter I will use “yaoi/BL” to reflect fan terminology in the Philippines. This chapter is based on fifty key informant interviews I conducted in a mix of English and Tagalog and on participant observation involving Filipino fan activities over the five years between 2008 and 2013. Key informants were chosen using snowball sampling, as it was the most efficient way to enter a largely hidden community and enabled me to meet fans from a wider range of ages, occupations, and levels of involvement in fan activities to ensure that my sample group is as representative of the community as possible. I focus on fans consuming Japanese BL manga scanlated (scanned and translated) into English, fansubbed (fan subtitled) Japanese BL anime, and English-language fan fiction written by Filipino fans. I specifically analyze the ways fans related yaoi/BL to their hopes for their own relationships and I argue that these young women envision a model of intimacy that challenges gender inequality, essentialism, and moral conservatism—all of which greatly impact the ways love relationships are typically constructed and maintained in the Philippines. My discussion is divided into three main parts. First, I offer a brief overview of yaoi/BL fan activities and an overview of Filipino yaoi/BL fans. Then, I look into Filipino female fans’ critiques of hegemonic masculinity in the Philippines. From there, I argue that for these women the genre’s androgynous aesthetic can be interpreted as a rejection of the gender binary and essentialism, and that certain kinds of yaoi/BL



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couples serve as models of balance, equity, and satisfaction in intimate relationships.

An Overview of Filipino Yaoi/BL Fans When examining yaoi/BL as a subcultural phenomenon in the Philippines, a key to understanding the appeal of this genre to its fans lies in determining what fans have in common in terms of their social background and their relationship with society at large. Doing so will enable us to discern the challenges they face in society and to understand how their participation in yaoi/BL fan activities can become useful either to reconcile or overcome these challenges. Similar to other countries in Asia, Filipino yaoi/BL fans are predominantly heterosexual females aged between twelve and forty, many of whom discovered yaoi/BL as teenagers, the period when interest in sexuality and gender identity normally begins. In addition, most are both elite and at least nominally Christian. Their membership in the affluent strata of Philippine society is evidenced by three specific indicators of social affluence. One is access to the Internet, which until now has remained a relatively expensive resource in the Philippines. The majority of my informants noted that they discovered yaoi/BL in cyberspace and use the Internet to regularly participate in online fan activities. Another is high income. A common denominator among students is attendance at private secondary schools and universities in large urban areas such as Manila and Cebu City, all of which charge above-average tuition. Among those who are working, all are skilled, relatively highly paid professionals. Lastly, the majority of these women have, at some point in their formative years, attended elite private Catholic schools, most of which are single-sex educational institutions. However, while Filipino yaoi/BL fans may be part of the socioeconomic elite, they feel marginalized as women in a patriarchal society, supported by the strongly androcentric and heteronormative Catholic Christian ideals that pervade sociocultural life in the Philippines. All but three of the Filipino yaoi/BL fans I have encountered were brought up in families who adhere to a Christian religious tradition, with most affiliated with Roman Catholicism. They were sent to private Catholic schools not only for the quality of education they provide, but also because the moral education they receive there is an

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extension of the values they are taught at home. Based on this, we can say that the majority of Filipino fans have experienced a strongly religious upbringing. The homosocial nature of most of these schools may provide students with more opportunities to discover and express themselves than would a coeducational school but it also tends to reinforce patriarchal norms. My informants explicitly expressed intense feelings of displeasure and discontent toward the modest, bashful, and submissive model of femininity that they were expected to live up to, as well as the objectifying nature of the male gaze toward women in local and foreign media. They all find the regimentation of middle-class female desire and sexuality very stifling. Yet, because of their long socialization in such conservative norms, many of them have already internalized these. Thus, despite their critiques and problems with hegemonic notions of femininity, many still find it difficult to confront the complex issues surrounding their own sexuality and desires using the erotica and/or pornography that are currently available to them. It should be noted that the Philippines has some of the most lenient laws and sociocultural attitudes toward sexual expression and sexual minorities in Asia. Despite the moral stigma that persists concerning pre/extramarital sex and nonheteronormative sexualities, the Philippine state and society allow for the free expression of diverse perspectives and identities. This relatively liberal sociopolitical context has allowed for the creation, albeit covertly, of an organized yaoi/BL fandom. Yaoi/BL-specific fan conventions have been held in the Philippines since 2003, with attendance notably increasing in recent years. Fans also hold small, discreet fan meet-ups in public spaces, such as cafes and food courts, that can be easily dismissed by outsiders as girls’ hangouts. Internet forums and sites dedicated to yaoi/BL also provide opportunities for fans to interact when face-to-face meetings prove to be difficult. These spaces guarantee freedom and a safe environment for Filipino fans to enjoy yaoi/BL as a community.

Critiques of Normative Masculinity In Japan, BL is deemed by fans to be an “ultimate love fantasy” through which its largely heterosexual audiences seek and find for themselves stories of pure and ideal love relationships.5 Kazuko Suzuki suggests



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that the production and consumption of male homosexual love stories in shōjo (girls’) manga stems from young women’s “despair of ever achieving equal relationships with men in a sexist society” and is an indication of “their quest for ideal human relationships.”6 Focusing particularly on the motivations in the 1970s of the so-called Year 24 Group of artists in innovating the storytelling techniques and conventions of the earliest form of BL, then called “shōnen’ai” (boys love), Suzuki states that the genre was an attempt to describe “ideal human relationships liberated from sexual inequality” and to provide active and assertive characters that readers and writers can identify with, both in their day-to-day affairs and romantic relationships.7 She argues that behind these women’s fascination and attachment to male homoerotic narratives lie explorations of the ideal, egalitarian relationships which they find difficult to attain in heterosexual relationships in Japanese society.8 As I have explained elsewhere, Filipino fans also perceive the ties between their favorite pairings as highly desirable models of intimate relationships.9 Looking at the yaoi/BL stories written by Filipino fan writers and the pleasures that come with reading and writing such stories are also in line with the “ultimate love fantasy” discourse. Whenever the subject of one’s favorite yaoi/BL characters is raised, my informants tended to compare these characters with the typical characteristics of most men in their own sociocultural group. A common thread that runs through these women’s testimonies is the critical stance that they take toward culturally dominant constructions of masculinity. The most common grievance they raised is the homophobic, machismo culture that is at the core of normative masculinity in the Philippines. Let us look at the following excerpt from my interview with “Lea,” a typical yaoi/BL fan in the Philippines (mid-twenties, white collar professional, educated at an all-girls Catholic school). When asked if yaoi/BL influenced the way she viewed the world, she responded: Well, definitely I start feeling those love tingles when two guys, you know. [giggle] . . . It’s sort of made me think, why don’t guys, even though they are straight to [say,] like, “Dude, we know you’re straight. Hug your bro.” [laugh] . . . Because our culture is just full of machismo . . . it’s definitely a breath of fresh air when guys are more open about their affection for each other. It also

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says something about their sexuality. Like, my male friends are [atypically] physically affectionate with each other, and they’re straight! . . . It’s just so delightful. . . . There’s more love in the world. Less . . . I dunno. Less murder! [laugh] More love, less murder, less war! Yeah, all that war and violence is such a masculine thing. It’s best if that’s phased out.10 Lea typifies how within Filipino fans’ views on their favorite yaoi/BL characters and stories can be found criticisms of heterosexist constructions of masculinity. Filipino fans disapprovingly speak of many Filipino men’s extreme discomfort in expressing male–male empathy, gentleness, and affection for fear of having their sexuality questioned. They also observed that Filipino men seemingly have a need to constantly prove their masculinity to each other through toughness, roughness, or, at times, aggression. They also expressed their admiration for the way yaoi/BL characters exhibit supposedly “feminine” traits of gentleness and warmth, believing that it would be good if Filipino men took a cue from these characters. Filipino fans seem to suggest a reconsideration of what constitutes “masculine” and “feminine” traits, and that it would be more constructive to regard the “softer” and “feminine” traits as fundamentally human, rather than as gendered values. Juxtaposing these women’s critiques of machismo and homophobia with their dissatisfaction toward portrayals of women as overly dependent, passive, and delicate creatures, we can see that their dissatisfaction is actually broader in scope. I would say that they are, in fact, criticizing the oppressive effects of heterosexism on both men and women through its rigidly dualistic and essentialist constructions of gender, and the unequal power relations between men and women that it creates and reproduces, affecting the conduct of love relationships. Yaoi/BL has helped reveal the artificiality of gender categories and heteronormativity to its fans and has served as an invitation to explore gender and sexual expression outside current norms. How then do these women envision a relationship that addresses the problems of gender essentialism and power inequalities? How does yaoi/BL contribute to their imagination of alternative ways of doing intimate relationships? In order to answer these questions, let us now turn our attention to the way these fans read and understand the significance of seme–uke (“attacker–receiver,” i.e., top–bottom) pairings.



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Rejection of Gender Binaries and Essentialism Admittedly, much diversity exists within the genre in terms of the themes and storylines explored, as well as the execution of character development. However, most fans with whom I spoke mentioned that it is “androgynous” appearances and personalities that make yaoi/BL characters interesting for them. The way Filipino fans use “androgyny,” particularly in regard to character development, is similar to what Jenkins observed about slash fan fiction, which is that it offers the “opening of new possibilities within the homosocial continuum, a broadening of the range of different styles of human interaction available to these characters. [It] does not imply that homosexual desire is any less ‘masculine’ than repressed homosocial desire, though it does call into question any rigid boundary between masculinity and femininity.”11 When asked what it was about the androgyny of yaoi/BL characters that makes it interesting for them, Filipino fans gave several reasons. One is that, in the words of one young woman, “androgynous characters seem to have the best of both worlds,” and that the combination of the best “masculine” and “feminine” traits definitely makes for a very attractive person. Related to this is Filipino fans’ conscious rejection of gender binary frameworks in their reception of yaoi/BL characters and stories. They were interested in seeing multidimensional characters who are not bound by traditional gender conventions and expectations. And they also expressed their hopes of being able to encounter people like these in their everyday lives. All of my informants stated that they find themselves particularly invested in couples and stories that depict relationships between characters with complex and nuanced personalities. In turn, they said they especially dislike those that represent two-dimensional portrayals of gender binaries, such as “masculine and feminine,” “dominant and submissive,” “cold and emotional,” or “strong and weak.” They admitted that the conventional practice of assigning a dominant or aggressive character as the seme and a more docile, submissive one as the uke remains widespread in the genre and fan community. However, they also pointed out that while this is a generic trope, they personally prefer pairings where neither character is purely dominant or unconditionally submissive, but instead each partner embodies a blend of both character types. In fact, these women expressed to me that they generally feel frustrated when they encounter yaoi/BL pairings that lean toward the

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stereotypical strong/dominant seme–fragile/submissive uke binary. For them, exploring the complexities and nuances of a character despite his more outwardly visible character tendencies is crucial to the enjoyment of yaoi/BL relationships. In addition, I also observed that all my informants consciously refrain from plotting “masculine” and “feminine” characteristics and gender roles onto the seme and uke, respectively. They expressed negative opinions toward uke characters with “fragile,” “emotional,” or “submissive” personalities. For them, such characterizations become too reminiscent of the uneven power dynamics typically present in heterosexual romantic relationships, of which they are very critical. The following excerpt from an interview with Clara (early twenties, white-collar worker) represents my informants’ typical attitude toward the masculine seme–feminine uke trope: “Actually, I really dislike it if the bottom one [the uke] is really weak. Because it’s like, nobody’s really that weak, you know? Everybody has both their strong and weak point[s]. . . . I suppose I want to see a balanced relationship. Like no one is too weak or too strong. It’s like complementing each other.”12 Like Clara, my other informants emphasized that being the uke should not simply be equated with “feminine” traits, in the same way that the inserter should not be, by default, considered as “masculine.” They insisted that the relationships and sexual activity in yaoi/BL must not be regarded as a mere proxy for heterosexual relationships, nor should one interpret them from the lens of a gender binary. They likewise emphasized their preference for “balanced”—that is, androgynous—characters and their inclination toward more nuanced character development. We can thus say that yaoi/BL has exposed these women to the charms and possibilities of androgyny, by mixing and matching traditionally compartmentalized “masculine” and feminine” traits in a person. Such imaginings present to these fans and to us the possibility that people may be able to conceive of themselves as composed of both masculine and feminine elements. This signals a movement away from essentialist notions of gender and sexual identity, which offers fertile conditions for the development of more egalitarian relationships.

The Balance of Power in Intimate Relationships One of the main criticisms made against yaoi/BL is that despite efforts to imagine intimate ties free from heterosexist power dynamics, the



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genre ironically reproduces these same inequalities through the seme– uke convention. The seme–uke convention was indeed originally modeled after heterosexual physical relationships, and much of its earlier iconography and characterizations has reinforced the rather heterosexist views of homosexual relationships, where the seme is considered more “masculine” and uke as the more “feminine” counterpart. Thus, the seme–uke relationship is criticized as merely heterosexual relationships in homosexual disguise, as it seems to exhibit the same gendered power struggles and dynamics as heterosexual couples. However, Filipino fans see the seme–uke dynamic in a radically different manner. Indeed, they generally view it in a very positive way, even a promising vision of how intimate relationships could become should oppressive patriarchal and heterosexist norms and female subordination be eliminated. All of my informants seem to interpret the seme–uke convention as a relationship of equals. A majority view it as one that merely depicts differences in characters’ individual personalities and the chemistry that ensues between them given a particular situation, rather than represent gendered power differentials. They do acknowledge that certain social inequalities do exist in yaoi/BL relationships, particularly those based on occupational prestige, economic standing, or age. But they also emphasize that in terms of their personal interactions, the seme–uke relationship is one wherein such power dynamics more or less reach a sort of equilibrium. Power play remains at the heart of this relationship, especially in the sexual realm, and it is this element that provides the erotic excitement that fans seek and enjoy in the genre. However, they explain that in the stories and characterizations that they prefer, characters are not entirely dominant or submissive in the relationship. For example, there are many yaoi/BL stories where in daily life a particular character can be powerful, intimidating, and bossy, even toward his lover, but actually plays the uke in bed. Likewise, being an uke does not necessarily mean being a pushover or subservient to all the seme’s whims. In fact, many relate that they particularly enjoy stories where the uke is able to stand his ground when the seme is becoming too domineering or can manipulate his partner in order to be able to get his way. It seems here that the varied power dynamics and struggles in the different aspects of a couple’s relationship are, in fact, a great source of pleasure and excitement for Filipino fans. However, equally important for them too is how the narrative and characterizations are able to

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“balance out” a character’s experiences of dominance and submission in the various aspects of the relationship depicted. This runs parallel to what Nagakubo Yōko terms the “amusementization of gender” in yaoi fiction.13 In her analysis of Japanese yaoi fiction, Nagakubo observes that both seme and uke characters possess a mixture of masculine and feminine traits, and that the real pleasure of yaoi comes from the “prescribed mixture of the characteristics of both sexes.”14 Any similarities that a seme–uke couple may have with traditional masculine–feminine roles, she argues, are mere peculiarities of a specific coupling, freeing each member of the couple and the readers from the oppression of sexual differences. This allows readers to imagine and enjoy what Fujimoto Yukari terms “a gender-blended world,” wherein “masculinity” and “femininity” are free from any sense of oppression.15

Yaoi/BL Relationships as “Love beyond Gender” Lastly, fans find yaoi/BL relationships and narratives very appealing and admirable because they represent an ideal type of love, which, from their description, I would term a “love beyond gender.” According to my key informants, their favorite stories mainly depict couples who like and accept each other’s individual qualities. Furthermore, each partner’s decision to pursue a relationship is driven primarily by a desire to gain a better understanding of each other, rather than mere sexual attraction or his partner’s biological sex.16 For me, yaoi stories are love at its finest. I mean, having a person love you for who you are, love no matter the gender, isn’t that what everyone wants to have but could rarely find? And I sometimes kind of feel how it is like whenever I read yaoi. I actually don’t see them as men, but people who have issues and feelings that I could relate to. It’s in the way they write and develop the characters, and it’s the way I like it.17 While this egalitarian relationship can definitely be applied to other sexual orientations, using male–male relationships as a narrative device seems to work better in underscoring the “love beyond gender” ideal for Filipino fans. For one, because homosexual relationships are deemed as abnormal and very much frowned upon in their societies, male–male romances are able to convey to their audience in a more



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acute and powerful manner the idea that it is possible to choose and commit to intimate relationships which may not conform to social and cultural expectations. Also, yaoi/BL fans know all too well, both from experience and media images, the power imbalances and sexual objectification of women that typically occur in heterosexual relationships. As a result, most could not help but be reminded of these and interpret heterosexual couples in a story as enacting these dynamics. So it is easier for them to plot onto homosexual relationships fantasies of non-­ objectification as well as emotional and sexual egalitarianism because of their abstract knowledge of such relationships. The notion of yaoi/BL relationships as depicting “love beyond gender” can also help explain why Filipino fans consider detailed descriptions on the development of the couple’s relationship as well as the individual characters’ growth through it as non-negotiable elements in yaoi/BL stories that they read. It also explains their general distaste for works that focus too much on sex scenes. Based on the priority fans put on depictions of a couple’s emotional give-and-take and acceptance of each other’s unique traits—instead of whether they conform to idealized gender attributes—over their sexual adventures, I would suggest that there is a deep-seated desire among fans to be seen equally as subjects, rather than mere objects, in a love relationship. In other words, these women wish to be pursued because of who they are and to achieve personal maturity through a relationship, rather than mainly what they can offer sexually. Thus, I would also argue that yaoi/BL relationships for many fans represent a victory over sexual objectification, relationships where men view their partners as individuals with complex personalities, desires, and aspirations, rather than solely as bodies for sexual gratification.

Resistance through Symbolic Inversions among Yaoi/BL Fans From the preceding discussion, we can see that underneath fans’ sometimes raunchy playfulness and seemingly trivial preoccupation with male–male romance stories lies a counterhegemonic discourse against normative gender constructs and intimate relationships in the Philippines. Filipino fans’ exposure to the conventions of male homoeroticism, androgyny, and patterns of coupling were all instrumental in illuminating their dissatisfaction with dualistic and essentialist constructions of gender and sexuality, as well as with intimate relationships in

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their societies. But more than that, by showing inversions of normative masculinity and sexual intimacy, yaoi/BL relationships provoke a rejection of rigid gender norms and oppressive power relationships. It also helps fans develop a more humanistic and egalitarian vision of men, women, and love relationships. We can, thus, say that yaoi/BL fan activities and discourses on gender and sexuality in the Philippines constitute hidden transcripts of resistance. While the symbolic inversions that Filipino fans see in yaoi/BL represent a critical response to heteronormativity, there has been much discussion and contention as to the function that these inversions serve in society at large. Does it mean open rebellion or is it, in fact, a legitimization of the dominant order? For instance, a critical point that can be raised against yaoi/BL is that resistance remains merely on the symbolic level, with very few finding inspiration from it to move toward overt resistance and political action. A majority of the fans I spoke with seemed to consider yaoi/BL primarily as a form of “stress release,”18 and they did not seem interested in actively pursuing a more balanced, equitable relationship in their own lives or helping to create a social environment that would be conducive to such a relationship. These are criticisms similar to those raised against (heterosexual) romance reading in general. Feminist scholar Tania Modleski, for example, argues that romance stories reinforce traditional expectations of male–female relationships and thus serve to reproduce patriarchal structures.19 However, Janice Radway points out that while such may be the case when romance texts are taken in isolation, the act of reading romance narratives itself is resistant, for it is “a significant and positive step away from the institutional prison [of marriage] that demands denial and the sublimation of female identity.”20 Romance narratives and romance reading speak to very real problems and tensions in women’s lives in expressing dissatisfaction about these issues. Therefore, it must be understood these are not read out of a sense of contentment with patriarchy, but because, in the words of John Storey, they “contain . . . an element of utopian protest or a longing for a better world.”21 Symbolic inversions play the important function of creating imaginative breathing spaces in which the normal categories of order and hierarchy are less than completely inevitable. The subversive potential of such activities and forms of expression is definitely there and must not be underestimated. Even if they do not accomplish anything else, symbolic inversions ultimately play an important



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imaginative function. They serve as strong reminders of the artificiality and arbitrariness of our seemingly “natural” social categories. Subcultures contain within them the seeds of transformation and can move people to act and reshape the order of things in the most opportune time and place. Thus, for these Filipino fans, yaoi/BL’s exploration of male homoeroticism has helped them realize and express their dissatisfaction with oppressive constructions of gender, sexuality, and intimacy. The genre’s inversions of normative masculinity and sexual intimacy have also led fans to reject these and to imagine a more balanced and reciprocal model of intimate relationships.

Notes  1.  Henry Jenkins, “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching,” in Television: The Critical View, ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 472. 2.  James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 4–5. 3. Andrea Wood, “‘Straight’ Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, nos. 1–2 (2006): 397. 4. In Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Scott looked into the panEuropean tradition of world-upside-down prints, which depicted a “topsyturvy world in which all normal relations and hierarchies are inverted” and where the “underdog took revenge” (167). He also noted that there are many other examples of such imagery that can be found in collective representations of culture, such as folktales, art, and ritual. Scott terms this cultural practice “symbolic inversions.” For more, see ibid., 166–172. 5.  Fujimoto Sumiko, “Onna ga otoko x otoko o ai suru toki: Yaoi-teki yokubōron, shiron,” Yurīka 39, no. 7 (2007): 64. 6.  Kazuko Suzuki, “Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon,” in Millennium Girls: Today’s Girls around the World, ed. Sherrie Inness (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 244. 7.  Suzuki, “Pornography or Therapy,” 250. 8.  Suzuki, “Pornography or Therapy,” 264. 9.  Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines: Conflict, Resistance and Imaginations through and beyond Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 13, no. 3

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(October 6, 2013), http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3 /fermin.html. 10.  Lea, interview with author, December 28, 2012. This interview and other interviews directly cited in this chapter were conducted in a mix of English and Tagalog, and all Tagalog was translated into English by me. 11. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge), 222–223. 12.  Clara, interview with author, March 18, 2013. 13.  Quoted in Fujimoto Yukari, “The Evolution of BL as ‘Playing with Gender’: Viewing the Genesis and Development of BL from a Contemporary Perspective,” trans. Joanne Quimby, in Boys Love Manga and Beyond, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 84–85. 14.  Quoted in Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 84. 15.  Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 85. 16. As I have noted in “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines,” a majority of Filipino fans view yaoi/BL relationships as a gay one rather than that of two straight men who merely happen to love each other, which seems to be the prevalent interpretation among Japanese BL fans. 17.  Karina, interview with author, December 27, 2012. 18.  This is similar to Fujimoto’s description, drawing on the words of manga artist Yoshinaga Fumi, of yaoi/BL fiction as “pressure point devices,” which loosen the restraints gender oppression puts on women—such as how massaging pressure points releases tension in the body—thus making yaoi/BL fans feel better through their consumption and production of this media. See Fujimoto, “The Evolution of BL,” 88–89. 19.  Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982), 25. 20.  Janice A. Radway, “Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context,” Feminist Studies 9, no. 1 (1983): 72. 21. John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction (Essex, U.K.: Pearson, 2001), 124.

chapter 13

Docile BL Bodies Boys Love under State and Societal Censorship in Singapore Aerin Lai

During the 1970s, Japanese anime found its way onto regular broadcast television in Singapore, and, since then, access to anime has extended to subscription channels such as Animax1 and online streaming websites. Since the 2000s, there has been a steady increase of animefocused conventions held in Singapore, reaching at least ten such conventions held in 2015.2 The annual Anime Festival Asia (AFA), one of the country’s largest anime festivals, has tripled in size since it began in 2008, in recent years regularly garnering around 100,000 attendees.3 Singapore Toy Games Comics Convention (STGCC) and Doujin Market (Doujinma) are notable among the other large-scale annual conventions held in Singapore. At such conventions, booths are available for rent and many local “fan artists”—namely, producers of fan art—make use of these booths to showcase and sell their creations. It is also usually through these conventions that boys love (BL) fan artists are able to sell their BL works offline. At present, while the consumption and production of BL in Southeast Asia have been studied prior to this volume,4 there has been a dearth of scholarship on BL fandom in Singapore specifically. Some may consider Singapore’s censorship of non-normative sexualities similar to that of China and other countries with strict media regulations. However, unlike those countries, Singapore’s stance toward LGBT issues and policy making regarding this matter has been inconsistent. Despite Penal Code 377A formally criminalizing (male) homosexuality and censorship regulations that ban media which “depict a homosexual lifestyle” and “promote and justify a homosexual lifestyle,”5 the government has

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permitted the organization of LGBT festivals since the early 2000s in an attempt to attract “pink tourism” and has to date turned a somewhat blind eye to the annual Pink Dot event supporting LGBT rights.6 Due to the nonheteronormative “lifestyle” and male-centric homoerotic pornography depicted in BL, one might expect BL to be banned by the state in accordance with the aforementioned censorship regulations. However, in actuality, BL-related merchandise continues to be bought and sold at conventions. This raises the question of the extent of state censorship of BL and more importantly, whether awareness of existing censorship regulations influences the kinds of BL that are produced in Singapore. Such questions suggest that fan artists’ interactions with state censorship and the process of selling BL work in a nation that is not sympathetic toward LGBT issues are well worthy of sociological investigation. The main aim of the present study is to understand how fan artists make sense of state censorship and social norms pertaining to sexuality while producing BL artwork and merchandise. This chapter first provides an overview of BL in Singapore, before discussing how fan artists make sense of censorship regulations and social norms surrounding LGBT issues and BL. It will then illustrate strategies artists use to contest the boundaries of these regulations without necessarily breaking them. I argue that while state censorship has not explicitly banned BL content, the discourses surrounding LGBT issues shape the kinds of BL material that fan artists choose to produce and sell at convention booths. Data show that fan artists internalize existing sociopolitical discourses on LGBT issues to produce self-censored BL. It also illustrates how these discourses may not be articulated solely via the mechanisms of formal state censorship but rather are evidenced in fan artists’ views of Singaporean society in general and how these views manifest in their works.

BL Fandom in Singapore The central role the Internet plays in disseminating BL content, along with connecting Singaporean fans with foreign fans in Japan, is not unlike that in other regions, including elsewhere in Asia, as discussed by many other chapters in this volume. Widespread use of online forums and blogs such as LiveJournal and Tumblr,7 as well as online hosting sites such as DeviantArt, has allowed Singaporean fans and artists to consume, produce, and share BL fan content with ease. Websites hosting fan scans of manga and anime streaming websites have been extensively



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accessed as well, with bilingual education in Singapore permitting fans to tap into English, Chinese, and Indonesian sources. Many groups on local online forums such as Sganime and Sgcafe have separate threads for BL, some of which have restricted access and are strictly monitored by fans, mainly to prevent underage readers from viewing explicit pornographic content. While the portal has recently declined in popularity in this sphere, LiveJournal’s private groups have been spaces where members have been able to sell Japanese BL dōjinshi, which Singaporeans usually call doujin or doujinshi, labels they also use for such works from Singapore and elsewhere. Local fans have also begun using pixiv, a popular Japanese hosting website which allows independent artists to share their illustrations. There is also an inconspicuous selection of BL manga sold at the Singapore branch of Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore chain. Currently, however, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the main avenues in which BL content is shared among fans. They are also the main platforms for BL fan artists to sell their creations—doujins, standalone artworks, and trinkets such as key-chains and pins. The production of such merchandise can be considered part of a larger transnational network connecting Singapore, the rest of Southeast Asia, and China. This is similar to the process of what Dru Pagiassotti has called “gloBLization” in Chinese danmei (BL) networks previously highlighted by Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu.8 For example, the fan artists I interviewed for this study mainly used Taobao.com, a Chinabased shopping website to produce their BL merchandise instead of ordering from local shops, since the cost of manufacturing these goods is considerably cheaper in China than it is in Singapore. The process is relatively simple as well. After artists’ designs are received, merchandise is produced and shipped directly to local addresses in Singapore. This transnational network also extends beyond the production process to the sale of BL goods. Some of the fan artists I spoke to for this study have sold their BL merchandise at conventions in Thailand and Indonesia. In addition, it is also common among Singaporean artists to collaborate with other artists from around the region to produce anthologies to be sold off- and online.

Methodology This chapter is based on interviews I conducted with ten Singaporeans (see table 13.1) in one to two rounds over the period of a year, between

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January 2017 and January 2018. All but one identified themselves as ethnic Chinese—the ethnicity of around three-quarters of Singaporeans and the vast majority of BL fans in Singapore, with Malays, Indians, and Eurasians making up the remainder.9 While there is a lack of empirical data regarding the demographics of BL fans in Singapore, there is a general sentiment among my participants that most of the BL fans in Singapore are ethnically Chinese. In fact, when asked, none of the participants knew non-Chinese BL fans in Singapore with the exception of “Rose,” who felt she did not fit into an officially recognized ethnicity—namely Chinese, Malay, Indian and Other—and requested to be listed as “mixed.”10 With the exception of one individual, who answered my questions in a password-locked Microsoft Word document over several rounds of email exchanges, I conducted these interviews over the phone or faceto-face at cafés, interviewees’ homes, or their offices. Of the ten, six are

Table 13.1. List of interview participants Gender

Ethnicity

Affiliation

Times Interviewed

20–24

F

Chinese

Fan artist

2

Clara

30–34

F

Chinese

BL fan

1

Donna

25–29

F

Chinese

Fan artist

1

Jack

20–24

M

Chinese

Self-identified “independent creator”

1

Jenny

35–39

F

Chinese

“BL doujinshi collector”

2

Martha

30–34

F

Chinese

Fan artist

1

Melody

25–29

F

Chinese

Fan artist

2

Mickey

30–34

M

Chinese

Convention organizer

2

Rose

20–24

F

Mixed

Fan artist

2

Sarah Jane

30–34

F

Chinese

Fan artist

1

Pseudonym

Age Range

Amy



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fan artists, three are BL fans who buy BL goods at conventions, and one is a convention organizer. Since the community of fan artists in Singapore is relatively small, through my personal contacts, I was able to recruit most of my interviewees using snowball sampling. I also contacted the convention organizer through the official Facebook page of one of the conventions he runs. All interviews were conducted without the use of an audio recorder. Interviewees were informed of the nature of this study before any interviews were conducted. Informed consent was also given to me to take fieldnotes during interviews, upon which the findings of this study are based. Pseudonyms have been used for both the names of interviewees and the names of conventions organized and attended by my interviewees to maintain anonymity.

Re-articulating State Censorship and Imagining a Conservative Singapore This section addresses how state censorship manifests and re-­ articulates itself in various ways which shape how fan artists produce BL goods. On the surface, it does seem as though state censorship is the key motivation for many of my interviewees’ choices. This is particularly true for “Mickey,” a convention organizer who comes into frequent contact with the authorities whenever he plans an event. In Singapore, a “public entertainment ad-hoc license” is required before any event using public space can take place.11 When applying for such licenses with the police, Mickey has to provide details on the kind of products that will be sold or displayed at these conventions. While the success and popularity of his conventions lies with his familiarity with fan culture as an insider, as a convention organizer Mickey sees the need to keep within the guidelines provided by the police. In addition to Mickey, some of my other interviewees raised concerns about the illegality of BL and fears of getting arrested for drawing explicit BL art. “Amy,” a student who has been selling her work at conventions for about five years, used to be part of a larger crew. After a while, conflicts with her crewmates led her to rent convention booths alone. My second interview with Amy was conducted in a fast food restaurant during a busy weekend. When I broached the topic of censorship, she looked around several times before telling me that she

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was afraid of violating the law by drawing sexually explicit BL art. This is because there is possibility of Info-communication Media Development Authority (IMDA) employees coming by large-scale conventions like AFA or STGCC to conduct random checks on the kind of goods that are being sold. Similarly, when I spoke with “Donna” at a crowded café in the central business district, she raised worries about getting into trouble with the authorities and getting arrested for drawing BL, especially since BL is doubly transgressive as both pornographic and nonheteronormative. These worries are made worse through rumors and hearsay about other artists having problems with the police. “Melody,” a designer who rents convention booths four to five times annually, used the example of police questioning a fan artist for an intercepted shipment of her explicit BL doujins to illustrate how these rumors make her fearful about being an artist in Singapore. Rose, who has had experience working with BL fan artists elsewhere within the Southeast Asian region, felt that the government’s conservative stance on LGBT issues has led to these restrictions being placed on BL. These sentiments offer an illustration of a Foucauldian panopticon, wherein the state is perceived to have extensive capacity for constant surveillance over its citizens (even in a crowded fast food restaurant) and for motivating individual efforts at self-censorship. Even so, selfcensorship may be motivated by other factors as well. “Jack,” a new university graduate who recently began drawing his own online manga, considers Singapore an authoritarian state where citizens fear their own government. Despite this, as a BL artist, he finds that conservative views about LGBT issues have a larger influence on how BL is produced in Singapore. While state censorship laws are significant, Jack’s views demonstrate this sense of navigation across various intersecting discourses— including both state and society—rather than merely conforming to censorship laws. When we discussed the general attitude of the Singaporean public toward BL, Donna brought up the “Kill la Kill” incident in 2013. Police were called in to mediate a heated argument between a cosplayer dressed up as a character from the 2013–2014 anime series Kill la Kill—revealing the lower half of her breasts—and a middle-aged Chinese Christian woman.12 Donna, who was attending that event as a cosplayer, elaborated on the trauma she experienced as a witness and the need for mutual tolerance between



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a conservative public and fan communities, including fans of BL, cosplay, and anime. In addition to Donna, a majority of the fan artists I interviewed and Mickey also brought up this incident to explain the importance of taking precautions to prevent similar public outcries when selling BL goods at conventions. In his work on collective memory, Maurice Halbwachs proposes that thinking of past events and memories allows one to “connect within a single system of ideas our opinions as well as those of our circle,” which also informs the social practices of those belonging to the same circle while conferring meaning upon those practices.13 In the case of my interviewees, while the “Kill la Kill” incident did not involve BL fan artists in any way, the evoking of this event reveals the collective imagination of a “conservative” Singaporean society that threatens the BL community. When elaborating on the conservative values of the general public, interviewees frequently made references to the “family.” For example, the possibility of parents bringing children to a roadshow event was one of Rose’s main sources of worry when deciding the kind of BL goods to sell at her booth, since she did not want to get into trouble. Amy encountered similar problems when preparing for events that families attend because she did not want to risk parents lodging complaints against event organizers or fan artists over offensive BL goods. Existing scholarship on the family in Singapore, in particular research by Youyenn Teo, argues that the heteronormative family in Singapore functions not only as a representation of sexual ideals but also serves as a means through which citizens gain access to public goods such as public housing.14 For example, heterosexual marriage is one of the key criteria to be eligible for newly built public flats. In the case of the BL community, the heteronormative family takes on a different meaning. For fan artists, the heterosexual family signifies the conservative traditional attitudes of Singaporean society, a society wherein nonheteronormative couples are denied marriage and parenting rights. My interviewees recognize that there is a misalignment between the normative values that support and valorize the heterosexual family and those within the BL community. Thus, not only do fan artists and event organizers see the family as a possible threat, but this misalignment also causes a jarring juxtaposition of the family and BL.

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Creating Permissible BL in Singapore Amid such censorship and fears, my interviewees do find ways both to negotiate with existing censorship guidelines and to deal with any potentially negative reaction from the public. This section will focus on how convention organizer Mickey tries to create safe spaces for fan artists and BL fans at his conventions, before exploring fan artists’ “under the table” practices at conventions. It concludes with a discussion on the effects such regulatory discourses on sex have on the kinds of BL that is produced in Singapore. When organizing BL conventions, Mickey has found dealing with the public most challenging. Unknowing Singaporeans may stray into a convention and find it difficult to accept the kind of products on display. Even though obtaining a public entertainment license renders private the public space Mickey uses for his conventions, there is still a danger that unsuspecting members of the public might wander by and choose to enter. The lack of an entrance fee, a choice Mickey has made to encourage doujin fans to come and buy things, also makes it easy for passersby to give into the temptation of their curiosity. He thus takes an extra precaution to protect fan artists and convention goers: putting up additional signs with the name of the event and barriers to clearly demarcate conventionspace—what, in the case of the present study, I term “BL-space.” Mickey reasons that, even though the event names do not include the word BL, it is safe to assume any individual entering a BL-space has insider knowledge of what that space entails. Outsiders who are tempted to enter will likely feel out of place and reluctant to explore, and to prevent problems in the event that any outsiders do wander in, Mickey makes sure that nothing too “obscene” is being displayed. One can draw parallels between Mickey’s efforts to create boundaries and an analogy Donna made, describing the BL community as chickens in a coop. As long as fan artists and members of the BL community stay within their safe space, they do not risk offending Singapore’s conservative public. However, it is possible to argue that these boundaries do more than just divide space. Space and place are necessary for the construction of identities where spatial boundaries also serve to create in- and outgroups.15 Membership in certain marginalized groups, for example, also affects the kind of spaces one has access to and also makes the space these groups occupy meaningful. Thus, it is possible to argue that the creation of these private BL-spaces in the conservative public



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landscape of Singapore reflects a contestation of power through the delineation between BL and heteronormative public spaces. The establishment of these “safe” spaces creates physical sites wherein fan artists and convention goers can challenge heteronormative understandings of sexuality. While censorship guidelines and convention regulations continue to apply within BL-spaces, they appear to be more fluid there, which allows fan artists to come up with strategies to circumvent restrictions, including selling work “under the table”— a phrase which was also used by almost all of my interviewees during our conversations about such practices. For example, Rose, Donna, and Amy mentioned that buyers would pre-order explicit artwork and pick it up at fan artists’ booths during conventions. This meant that without such knowledge and contacts, as well as without making such arrangements in advance, most buyers do not have access to these artworks. For Rose, however, instead of accepting pre-orders, she has either used tape to conceal body parts on her artwork or drawn “safe” covers for her explicit doujins. She has also occasionally conducted identification checks on buyers who appear underage. However, despite such negotiations with guidelines, as mentioned earlier, these sorts of tactics still hinge upon tacit understandings of what is permitted and what is not, which serves to perpetuate and reproduce normative sexual ideals, even inside the supposedly safe BL-space. On the other end of the spectrum, some of my interviewees choose not to sell anything with explicit sexual content at conventions in Singapore. For example, “Sarah Jane,” a designer who sells her fan art at conventions internationally, finds selling explicit BL art in Singapore too dangerous to do it. Similarly, Donna and Amy choose to focus on subtle and nonerotic BL art to avoid possible apprehension by the police. Sometimes, these strategies for self-censorship are encouraged by buyers at conventions as well. “Clara,” a design graduate, is a BL fan who attends conventions inside and outside of Singapore, collecting BL goods. As a buyer, she finds subtly sexual BL merchandise sold at local conventions appealing because it relies on the buyer’s fan knowledge to recognize references to common “ships” (short for “relationships,” meaning couples created by fans). In this process, it reaffirms the shared meanings and knowledge between buyer and fan artist while, at the same time, positioning these individuals within the larger BL community, demonstrating their shared “BL literacies,” as Kristene Michelle Santos terms this elsewhere in this volume. According to Anne Allison,

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the erasure of genitalia in Japanese manga as a means of censorship ironically produces a sexual fantasy that “depends on body imagery that either decenters the genitals or alludes to them indirectly.”16 Fan artists’ self-censorship, then, produces a Singaporean form of BL fantasy that allows fan artists and buyers alike to evade possible issues with the censorship board and the public. In The Puppet and The Dwarf, Slavoj Žižek criticizes the double-bind of present-day consumerism whereby prohibition acts to give the false impression of permission. It gives rise to situations in which “you can enjoy everything, but deprived of its substance” and yet “everything is prohibited if it is not deprived of its substance.”17 Against this critique, one can consider the subtle or nonexplicit “BL bodies”—which I used to refer to the bodies depicted in fan artists’ BL art and other merchandise regardless of whether the bodies are engaging directly with other BL bodies—to be permissible only because they have been stripped of their transgressive substance. Without their queer and pornographic essence, these BL bodies become permissible in Singapore. The regulatory norms in Singapore surrounding sex are diffused through such prohibitions that frame and produce permitted BL fantasies. Social institutions such as legal systems and governmental agencies, together with members of the public embedded in these institutions, support existing discourses on sex in the country. Michel Foucault argues that this network of disciplinary power distributed through such institutions perpetuates discourses which delimit and frame social practices by producing “subjected and practised bodies, ‘docile’ bodies . . . a certain mode of detailed political investment of the body.”18 State censorship and the threatening specter of a conservative public therefore serves to discipline fan artists as citizens within the Singaporean bodypolitic, but the effect of that power extends to the kind of BL bodies they create. Judith Butler’s reading of Foucault in Bodies That Matter proposes that the materialization of the body itself is “coextensive with its investiture with power relations, and materiality is the effect and gauge of this instrument.”19 In this case, power relations between state, society, and fan artists are inscribed upon the surface of these BL bodies.

In this chapter, I have sought to provide an analysis of BL in Singapore and the ways in which BL artists circumvent state and societal censorship. My discussion has focused on exploring how formal state censorship is



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articulated through existing legal structures such as licenses and censorship regulations while also taking the form of fan artists’ imaginings of a conservative Singaporean public. I demonstrated how these forms of censorship, both governmental and societal, shape the ways in which fan artists approach their BL creations. Instead of a complete erasure or rejection of BL, I argued that fan artists and convention organizers make use of certain strategies to produce permissible BL. This is demonstrated through convention organizers’ efforts to establish BL-spaces or fan artists’ self-censorship tactics, such as taping across genitalia on doujin covers, conducting ID checks, and/or avoiding sexual BL work all together. I ended my discussions with the possibility that these tactics, in particular fan artists’ avoidance of eroticism in BL work, have produced a Singaporean-esque form of BL that has been stripped of the male homo-erotic fantasies that constitute the genre to begin with. The BL bodies that are created by the fan artists I interviewed can be thought of as docile bodies twice over, imagined and imaginary bodies that have been shaped by existing sociopolitical discourses on sexuality. However, despite the docility of these BL bodies, fan artists are far from compliant. Their efforts in creating BL work and merchandise despite fears of regulations and censorship should be seen as an illustration of their agency rather than as straightforward compliance with the rules. To see these artists and organizers as simply following orders from an authoritarian state would be to overlook the varying degrees of agency they exercise, since the very act of producing BL bodies in itself is, to a not-insignificant extent, an act of resistance contesting heteronormative sexual ideology in Singapore.

Notes   1.  Chan Boon, “Fascination with Japanese Anime Grows,” Straits Times, December 9, 2015, http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment /fascination-with-japanese-anime-grows. 2.  Gurveen Kaur, “Singapore’s Anime Instinct: Japanese Pop Culture Is Still an Attraction,” Straits Times, June 11, 2015, http://www.straitstimes .com/lifestyle/singapores-anime-instinct-japanese-pop-culture-is-still-an -attraction. 3.  Gwendolyn Ng, “Anime Festival Asia Grows More Than Three Times Larger than When It Launched in 2008,” Straits Times, November 25,

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2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/anime-festival -asia-grows-more-than-three-times-larger-than-when-it-launched; Cheryl Teh, “Anime Festival Asia Kicks Off with a Bang,” Straits Times, November 29, 2019, https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/anime-festival-asia-kicks-off -with-a-bang. 4. For example, on the transculturalism of BL and its postcolonial effects on Indonesia and the Philippines, see Kristine Michelle Santos and Febriani Sihombing, “Is There a Space for Cool Manga in Indonesia and the Philippines?” in The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Mark McLelland (New York: Routledge, 2017); and Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines: Conflict, Resistance and Imaginations through and beyond Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 13, no. 3 (2013), http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3/fermin.html; on religious BL fans in Malaysia and Indonesia, see Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Negotiating Religious and Fan Identities: ‘Boys’ Love’ and Fujoshi Guilt,” in McLelland, The End of Cool Japan. 5. See Info-communication Media Development Authority (IMDA), “Content Code for Nationwide Managed Transmission Linear Television Services,” October 1, 2016, http://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/imda/files /regulation-licensing-and-consultations/codes-of-practice-and-guidelines /acts-codes/managed-linear-tv-services-content-code-1mar2018.pdf?la=en. Similar clauses regarding the depiction of homosexuality also appear in other content codes provided by the IMDA, such as film censorship. See 11(b) in IMDA, “Board of Film Censors Classification Guidelines,” July 15, 2011, https://www.imda.gov.sg/-/media/imda/files/regulation-licensing -and-consultations/codes-of-practice-and-guidelines/acts-codes/10-classifi cationguidelines15072011.pdf?la=en. 6.  Simon Obendorf, “Both Contagion and Cure: Queer Politics in the Global City-State,” in Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures, ed. Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012); Rei Kurohi, “Pink Dot Rally Shines Light on Discrimination, Section 377A,” Straits Times, June 29, 2019, https://www.straitstimes.com /singapore/pink-dot-rally-shines-light-on-discrimination-section-377a. 7. In December 2018, Tumblr banned all “adult content,” including illustrations depicting sexual activities. The ban remains in place as of mid2021. See “Adult Content,” under Tumblr’s “Community Guidelines,” last updated July 16, 2020, https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/community. This change postdates the research for this chapter. The ramifications



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of this change on BL fans in Singapore and elsewhere remain to be thoroughly examined. 8. Dru Pagliassotti, “GloBLisation and Hybridisation: Publishers’ Strategies for Bringing Boys’ Love to the United States,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 20 (April 2009), http://intersections .anu.edu.au/issue20/pagliassotti.htm; Ling Yang and Yanrui Xu, “Chinese Danmei Fandom and Cultural Globalization from Below,” in Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, ed. Maud Lavin, Ling Yang, and Jing Jamie Zhao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), especially 4–8. See also Alan Williams, “Rethinking Yaoi on the Regional and Global Scale,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 37 (2015), http://intersections .anu.edu.au/issue37/williams.htm. 9.  Ministry of Trade and Industry—Department of Statistics, “Singapore Citizens by Age Group, Ethnic Group and Sex, End June, Annual,” July 29, 2019, https://data.gov.sg/dataset/singapore-citizens-by-age-group-ethnic -group-and-sex-end-june-annual?view_id=a690dff9-d5f4‑4184‑9744 -dd75fda45e9d&resource_id=0afcc45c-ba18‑432d-8ce1-f2c5910ffff6. 10.  On the problems with ethnic categorization in Singapore, see the chapter “Governing Race: State Multiracialism and Social Stability,” in Chua Beng Huat, Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2017). 11.  According to Singapore Police Force guidelines in effect prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, “as the organiser of any event, you are to conduct your event in a socially responsible manner and ensure that it does not cause any danger or undue alarm to the general public.” See Singapore Police Force, “Public Entertainment,” last modified January 25, 2018, (https://www.police.gov.sg/e-services/apply/licenses-and-permits/public -entertainment/rules-and-regulations). 12.  Nurul Azliah, “Woman Calls Police over Cosplayer’s ‘Underboob’ at Anime Festival,” Yahoo News Singapore, November 15, 2013, https://sg.news .yahoo.com/woman-calls-police-over-cosplayer-s-%E2%80%98underboob— at-anime-festival-100256199.html. 13.  Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 14. Youyenn Teo, “The Singaporean Welfare State System: With Special Reference to Public Housing and the Central Provident Fund,” in The Routledge International Handbook to Welfare State Systems, ed. C. Aspalter (London: Routledge, 2017).

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15. See the chapter “Spatial Identities,” in Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe, Discourse and Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006). 16. Anne Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 17.  Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 96. 18.  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 138–139. 19. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993), 34.

chapter 14

The Queer if Limited Effects of Boys Love Manga Fandom in Thailand Poowin Bunyavejchewin

This chapter explores what happened when boys love (BL) media left its native land and found new fans among Thais. I start by tracing the historical trajectory of BL from its arrival in Thailand to its current popularity. Drawing upon the findings of a survey I conducted of BL fans in Thailand, I then examine BL’s nature and appeal as represented by “katun-wai”—namely “Y comics,” a term which borrows the y from the Japanese term yaoi and is used locally to refer to Japanese BL manga titles that have been translated and sold in Thailand. Importantly, I investigate the ways and the degree to which existing gender norms have affected the presence of BL media in general, and of BL manga in particular. The chapter concludes by recapping BL’s journey in Thailand and remarking on the Thailandization of Japanese BL to create a specifically Thai genre of male–male romance.

Boys Love Spreading into Thailand Japanese manga has made major inroads in Thailand since the 1980s. As in other countries, manga rides partly on the popularity of Japanese anime, which is regularly broadcast on television.1 Manga was quickly taken up by Thai audiences and soon displaced the popularity of local comics. Until the early 1990s, most commercially published manga in Thailand was pirated.2 However, after Japanese publishing companies started taking legal action against piracy, publishers ceased publishing pirated works and started buying the licenses; most manga sold in Thailand today are translated under license from their original Japanese publishers. Manga now

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has the largest share in the country’s comics market, accounting for 90 percent of the market value.3 BL manga came late to Thailand compared to other manga genres. BL manga started to appear in the late 1980s, a few years before local comics publishers selling pirated mainstream manga began to be regularly sued by the original Japanese publishers for copyright infringement, resulting in a decline in the number of manga titles translated into Thai.4 Publishers of pirated BL took this opportunity to create a following outside mainstream manga fandom. Aoike Yasuko’s longrunning From Eroica with Love (1976–2012; Eroika yori ai o komete), first released in Thai as Song khon chuean khom around 1987, is considered the first Thai-translated BL manga title to be sold illegally in the country.5 Even though BL manga had a steadily expanding niche, its market share during the 1990s remained relatively small. Despite their rapidly growing popularity among female fans, particularly high school students, a large if shrinking proportion of BL manga translated and sold in Thailand has continued to be pirated. BL became the only genre of manga published without a license.6 It was not until the 2010s that major comics publishers started licensing BL manga titles for legal sale in the country. The first two licensed BL manga titles, Donut Letter (2005; Dōnatsu tsūshin), by Takahashi Mako, and I Want to Become Your Bird (2005; Boku wa kimi no tori ni naritai), by Homerun Ken, were both released in 2010 by the Thai branch of the Japanese company Animate Group.7 However, as of late 2020 Animate Group has not subsequently licensed additional BL titles. While Animate Group did not publicize the reason they quickly abandoned the genre, among the reasons for the decision by publishers in Thailand, including Animate, not to license BL titles appears to have been concern that BL manga could be considered to violate Thai criminal law regarding obscenity, an issue I will discuss further below. Although the law has seldom been used to suppress BL in Thailand, it has happened. In 2006, after growing public anxiety over the genre’s allegedly pornographic content, government officials removed all BL manga from bookstore shelves around the country and—temporarily, as it turned out—prohibited the sale of all BL titles. Nonetheless, this censorship was not on the ground that BL manga itself was considered illegal; rather, the genre’s male homoerotic narratives were discursively ascribed to masculine homoeroticism, thus drawing attention to and offering positive representations of an invisible population within the



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gendered landscape of Thai society. But I shall return to the issue of representation later. In spite of such setbacks, in 2014 large comics publishers in Thailand finally began licensing BL titles. Among them, Bongkoch Publishing, a Thai publisher specializing in Japanese shōjo manga (girls’ comics), for example, established a subsidiary, BLY Publishing, to specialize in the BL genre. Since then, licensed copies of BL manga have been on the shelves in bookstores around the country—in some cases right next to pirated ones. As evidence of the shift toward the acceptance of BL manga, while Animate Group may not publish BL itself, the Bangkok branch of the Animate bookstore now has a sizable BL section and even prominently features BL titles among the new releases at the front of the store.

Boys Love Fans in Thailand As just noted, large comics publishers in Thailand started buying BL manga’s licenses in the mid-2010s—decisions certainly driven by the increasing popularity of BL media, and further fueling demand for BL in the Thai comics market. Who in Thailand is consuming Japanese BL media, and why? In the Thai language, local female BL fans are usually called sao-wai (Y[aoi] girls), and local male BL fans are sometimes called hnum-wai (Y[aoi] boys). Both terms, it should be noted, have negative connotations similar to the respective Japanese terms fujoshi and fudanshi.8 Rather than merely theorize about sao-wai and hnum-wai, I have examined BL’s nature and appeal by asking these fans directly about their fondness for BL manga—which was until recently the most popular form of the BL genre in Thailand—reaching out via an online, Thai-language survey of BL fans that attracted a total of 672 respondents.9 Although the fans might not be fully aware of or able to articulate precisely their reasons for liking the genre, examining the reasons they give for their devotion is indispensable. In Thailand, as in Japan, women, who represented 89 percent of survey respondents (six hundred individuals), seem to constitute the majority of BL fans, although a non-negligible number of men, comprising 11 percent of respondents (seventy-two individuals), also read BL manga.10 The survey demographics suggest that Thai BL fans are young overall, with around three-quarters of respondents being of high school and university age. Among respondents, 33 percent of females

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and 13 percent of males were under fifteen years old, 27 and 31 percent respectively were between fifteen and eighteen, and 26 and 31 percent were between nineteen and twenty-four. Intriguingly, BL fandom in Japan is generally described as predominantly comprised of straight women.11 However, just 42 percent of my survey’s female respondents self-identified as heterosexual; 36 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 19 percent as asexual, with 3 percent describing themselves as homosexual. By contrast, the majority of the survey’s male respondents self-identified as either homosexual, at 42 percent, or bisexual, at 40 percent. Only 18 percent described themselves as heterosexual and none as asexual. These results suggest that in Thailand, as in Japan, BL appeals to heterosexual women, but it also seems to be popular with bisexuals and other same-sex-attracted women and men. We now know who is consuming BL media, having identified the saowai and hnum-wai. But what of the why? My online survey asked that very question. One frequent response—from both male and female respondents—was that it evoked in them a feeling of fin—a powerful emotional response. The word fin is semantically rich, being both polysemous and ambiguous. It cannot be easily defined in the Thai language. In a scholarly context, making sense of fin becomes easier if one understands it in the same connotative sense as the Japanese word moe, which shares similar, though not identical, connotations.12 I asked the respondents to define fin, and one female respondent wrote: “I can’t really explain this feeling. When I feel it, my heart beats really fast like it’s about to explode; I feel shy; I feel sexual desire; my imagination runs wild. The feeling is so good beyond description.” Apart from the genre’s evoking a fin feeling in fans, the respondents cited as the reasons they liked BL the genre’s absence of female protagonists, romantic ideals, graphic depictions of sexual scenes, and nonheteronormative space. This list shares some similarities to Western BL fans’ preferences.13 For many BL fans in Thailand, including male fans, the stereotypical heroine in Japanese shōjo manga seems to have always annoyed them. One female respondent explained: Having a second lead male character instead of a female lead is the reason I prefer katun-wai. In male–female romance manga, the lead female characters are usually weak and just keep making cute expressions (which I, as a reader, actually find “slappable”).



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Sometimes, they act foolishly for no good reason. But in the BL genre, even the uke [bottom] characters are different from the female leads, because of course they are men. This is why I like them—they are mature and reasonable; they are not crybabies; they don’t act stupidly, and they are emotionally strong. Fans also said they enjoy BL simply because there are a lot of boys. For instance, one female respondent explained, “It feels fin.^^” Her use in the survey response of a common emoticon indicating the eyes of a smiling person serves to emphasize her pleasure. She continued, “I like hot guys to begin with. I like watching or reading anything with lots of hot guys in it. Another reason I jin [fantasize about] the guys going at it among themselves is because I don’t like any other girl to have them. It’s like these guys are my boyfriends. It’s like . . . ‘they’re mine, bitches!’ But if their partners are also male then I actually feel fin instead, so it’s okay.” Furthermore, reading BL manga allowed fans to identify freely with either the seme (the top and more masculine partner; called ruk in Thai) or the uke (the bottom and more feminine partner; rub). Nevertheless, BL also seems to be favored by local fans for its depiction of what some see as akin to “gender-free” love. Many female respondents expressed appreciation for the gender-free nature of the romantic relationships in BL manga. They saw BL as representing an ideal love between equals, a true love beyond sex or gender, resonating with fans in the Philippines described by Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin elsewhere in this volume. As one female respondent said, “I feel the relationships are more equal than male–female relationships. Japanese manga normally likes to present women as lesser than men.” In BL, characters often seem largely unhampered by the limitations imposed by the biological and sociocultural gender roles characteristic of heterosexual relationships in Thailand and elsewhere. Both the seme and uke seem free to initiate any kind of relationship they want, without having to worry about virginity, since sex does not mean marriage, and marriage is based on pure love and not on gendered expectations. Besides that, there is no risk of getting pregnant. And the possibility of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection is almost never considered in this fantasy world. Additionally, to some fans, the androgynous nature of the male characters in BL represents a desirable equality between the masculine and feminine. Even more masculine and muscular seme

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characters generally embody the softness of pan–East Asian soft masculinity, expressing a less macho, more sensitive and caring attitude toward their lovers, while maintaining their tough masculine exterior. For these reasons, some of the female respondents considered romantic love in BL to be the ultimate kind of love. As one wrote, “It is looove [sic]. It’s pure love without expecting anything in return, unlike ‘XXX’ relationships of some male–female couples.” To the extent that fans seek in BL a nonheteronormative space in which the precarious lives of people with nonheteronormative genders and sexualities are allowed to become visible, intelligible, and legitimate, their consumption of the genre can be considered political. A small number of female respondents stated that reading BL manga provides women an escape from gender-normative prescriptions that prevent them from fulfilling their personal sexual and emotional needs; it rejects the constraints of normative femininity that expects them to control their sexual urges and sees these as much less intense than those of men. While reading BL, these women neither feel forced to identify with a female “victim” by virtue of their gender nor do they feel it is morally wrong. One female respondent commented thusly: “Maybe I do have a desire for the male sex myself, but because I feel confined by the tradition that taught me women shouldn’t feel such desire, I end up using a male character as my own sexual surrogate.” Male Thai fans, especially those who are gay, appreciate BL’s nonnormative latitude. A large number of male respondents, mostly homosexual, cited the non-normative space that BL manga provides as a reason to like the genre. One male respondent explained he likes BL: “Because it feels close to me. It’s the fantasy that I want to live, because I also like the same sex. I feel entertained while also feeling accepted. . . . In the social context of katun-wai, it’s normal for men to be in love; gay guys are surrounded by friends who actually admire them rather than despise them.” Explicit sexual scenes are yet another important reason for BL manga’s popularity among Thai fans, both male and female. One female respondent wrote, “Well, it’s cute. It’s so fun to see the painful facial expressions of the uke, haha. =;;=// It makes me feel horny!” (The emoticon in her reply evokes a celebratory exclamation.) Another wrote, “I feel fin when I read katun-wai, like in the scenes where the guys kiss or shower together, or when they have XXX.” Nonetheless, it would be insufficient to declare that BL manga is a form of pornography



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specifically for women. As the survey suggested, gay men also enjoy reading BL for sexual stimulation. One gay man’s comment got straight to the point in this regard: “I read it to help me masturbate.” To be sure, however, BL fans in Thailand do not share all the same preferences for the genre. While BL is considered by some to be a hobby, it is deemed by others to be a temporary shield from, though not resistance to, gendered social bonds and barriers. What perhaps is most essential, then, is to look closely at the gendered landscape in which BL is situated.

Boys Love in the Conservative Kingdom What does it mean that BL flourishes in the specific, structured landscape of strict Thai gender norms? In that country, masculine–feminine binarism is considered the only legitimate form of erotic relations, while, in spite of widely held views outside Thailand, masculine homoeroticism has long been unaccepted. The gendered landscape spells out a spatial gender segregation between the public and private sphere, whereas gender norms are an unseen force that dictates who has the right to enter and to be visible in the public sphere, and who is considered unworthy, an intruder. The kingdom’s reinforcement of gender norms includes formal sanctions and enforcement of discriminatory laws. Thailand is a land of contrasts. It long ago legalized same-sex sexual activity and no longer classifies homosexuality as a mental illness—indeed, the country promotes its tourism industry as “gay friendly”—and at the same time codifies gay people as lesser citizens. In Thailand, while they can serve openly in the military, gay people cannot marry or adopt children. The aforementioned use of criminal law to ban BL could be seen as a formal operation of the gender norms, as the detailed discussion that follows will argue. As noted above, large comics publishers have been buying BL manga licenses only since the mid-2010s. This delay is commonly attributed to legal problems. Given that BL manga frequently contain explicit sexual scenes, BL works often push the boundaries of Section 287 of the Criminal Code, which outlaws obscenity. The Thai Supreme Court defined as “obscene” “anything that is sexually shameful to the eyes or offensive which is the direct opposite of artistic expression,”14 and described an image as obscene on the grounds, inter alia, that “it is intended to incite wanton sexual desire.”15 However, there are no

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objective criteria to deem something obscene. In this regard, the fundamental issue is whether BL manga would be considered obscene or pornographic under Section 287,16 but even so, statutory interpretation is uncertain and unclear, if not potentially unprincipled, as it always depends on subjective judgments of law enforcement, mostly the police. Punishment under Section 287 is imprisonment or a fine or both. The legal uncertainties and ambiguities surrounding the statutory interpretation and application of Section 287 caused Thai comics publishers to be apprehensive of whether licensed BL manga might be copyrightable under the Thai Copyright Act. Any artwork deemed obscene according to the act cannot be copyrighted, since such materials would be in violation of Section 287 of the Criminal Code.17 It was not clear to the comics publishers whether licensed BL titles would be considered pornographic, and thus could not be copyrighted, or qualify as erotic art, which could be copyrighted and sold legally. It was this legal dilemma that initially deterred Thai comics publishers from buying the licenses of BL titles, despite high demand in the comics market.18As BL manga is generally read by a niche audience and is not widely known in public, Section 287 of the Criminal Code has stifled BL in Thailand on multiple occasions. Many in the publishing industry routinely pay bribes to law enforcement, a practice we can assume extends to the publication of BL manga. The vague, longstanding Section 287 was initially applied to pirated BL titles in 2006 when BL first made the headlines after a conference presentation by Yanathorn Jiararattanakul, a graduate student at Chulalongkorn University. Although Jiararattanakul’s presentation on female Thai BL fans was purely academic, the words used in media headlines were generally negative, harsh, and accusatory. Words like “perverse” (wiparit) were used to describe BL manga.19 The media’s sudden focus on BL, which engendered social anxiety over the genre’s perceived harmfulness and perversity, led to the temporary removal of all BL titles from the shelves. The issue, I argue, was about neither obscenity nor illegality per se, but about male homoerotic visibility in the public sphere. In Thailand, where only heterosexual relations have long been presented as natural and accepted, the Thai state is deeply concerned with positive representations of Thai-ness—the key identity attributes of the nation and its people; this is reflected in the state’s control over public portrayals of queer sexualities, particularly gay sexuality.20 Here, I



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use the term “gay” in its local sense of referring to masculine-identified male homosexuality, which is different from “kathoey” which, loosely speaking, refers to male-to-female transgender individuals. Locally, the latter variously denotes effeminate, cross-dressing men, or transgender females as well as hermaphrodites,21 “generally regarded . . . to be a psychological woman born inside a man’s body,” and thus places them within a heterosexual framework.22 In contrast, gayness, discursively ascribed to the sexual deviance of homoeroticism, is deemed “foreign, strange, potentially dangerous, or even criminal, and a perverted form of manhood.”23 Because the gay man is a man in both body and mind, but sexually desires another man, gayness is regarded as violating Thai gender norms, especially the stereotypically gendered binary oppositions.24 Masculine homoeroticism is therefore problematized as a “perversion” (khwam-wiparit) that needs to be “corrected” (kae-khai),25 socially identified as un-Thai, and described as a corrupting foreign influence that results in perversion among Thai youths. It is undeniable that the state has rarely intervened in private sexual practices, so long as such practices are not exposed in public. Male homosexuality is not illegal under Thai law, as noted above, but most Thai people believe that non-normative sexual behaviors should be expressed only in private. A growing gay presence in the public sphere, especially in the media, concerns the state, and lawmakers have stated that it could lead to an increase in male homosexuality. Consequently, the state has occasionally responded with censorship when there has been an increase in the public visibility of male homosexuality—even at times restricting the times and networks on which the highly popular Thai BL TV dramas can be broadcast as well as the degree of sexual explicitness they depict.26 The Thai state’s sanctions against masculine homoeroticism are rarely confrontational; rather, they operate powerfully through ideological state apparatus to undermine the legitimacy of gay people as equal citizens. However, it must be noted that, so long as a gay man does not express his sexuality in public, he is unlikely to be subjected to vehement criticism, anxiety, or shame.27 Hence, what matters is visibility, not masculine homoeroticism per se. In sum, in Thailand masculine homoeroticism and gay men are “tolerated” but not “accepted,” and state control is generally exerted over the public sphere rather than the private sphere. I argue that the main reason behind the temporary prohibition on BL manga was, in fact, that the media brought male homosexuality into the public sphere.

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The genre’s male homoerotic narratives were discursively linked to gayness—BL manga is, in fact, often referred to as katun-gay (gay comics)— thereby disturbing, if not breaching, heteronormative gender norms wherein homosexuality is generally marginalized or completely invisible. BL is therefore out of place within the Thai discursive schema. Moreover, Thai fans, both male and female, are seen as perverted, albeit in varying degrees. Nevertheless, it is difficult to explain why the male homoerotic narratives in BL have been legally tolerated since 2014, when big comics publishers started licensing BL titles, allowing the genre to be more socially and publicly visible. After all, the law by which BL was deemed obscene in 2006 still exists, and Thai society as a whole remains relatively conservative when it comes to sexuality, particularly homosexuality. I suspect BL’s growing popularity and the government’s relaxed restrictions have become possible because Thai gender norms have begun shifting, thus reconfiguring the gendered landscape. Forces contributing to the ongoing redefinition process within the context of local gender norms, allowing BL to be present visibly, perhaps included the East-Asianization of genders and sexualities in Thai society, and the queering of the public sphere, a topic taken up by Kang-Nguyễn Bung’chu Dredge in this volume. Simply put, this might be seen as an extension of a phenomenon whereby, through popular culture, the influence of what Kang-Nguyễn describes as “Korpanese” soft masculinity has challenged and partly supplanted hegemonic Thai masculinity, originally based on the modern Western notion of masculinity, reshaping the imaginations and practices of Thai masculinity.28 Another force was the continuing queering of the public sphere, starting with the 2007 release of Love of Siam (Rak haeng Sayam),29 a Thai queer teen-romance film that effectively disrupted the discursive reproduction of heteronormativity at the heart of popular culture.30 The film unintentionally brought the theretofore invisible and unspoken presence of gay male youths into the public spotlight, motivating and encouraging them to express themselves openly, thereby serving as a powerful queering influence. This is not to imply that gay men and masculine homoeroticism are now accepted as part of Thai-ness. Rather, this is to say that they have been increasingly tolerated and allowed to share the public sphere to a certain extent. Nevertheless, homosexuality is still subject to various forms of sanctions, especially when it becomes an object of public



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scrutiny. This, I contend, is also true for the recent and current challenges faced by BL manga and media in general in Thailand. This chapter has drawn the story of Japanese BL’s journey in Thailand based on the timeline and trajectory of katun-wai—building a “map” of the journey, tracing the road that BL traveled, and describing the local female and male BL fans and the surrounding terrain of their fandom. The late 1980s saw the first BL manga title in Thai, followed in the 1990s by the emergence of a fandom of the BL genre of Japanese manga in the country, while the 2000s saw both the growth of BL and a backlash against it, owing to the genre’s narratives and its fans’ fantasies that entail male homoeroticism rather than the heteronormative love that Thai gender norms dictate. The 2010s might be tied to a boom in the popularity of commercial BL manga specifically and an expansion of BL fandom more broadly, which I would argue is thanks—and contributing—to an ongoing process of redefinition of gender norms that began in the same period. Today, the Japanese genre of BL has proved not only popular and commercially viable but has also melded into the popular culture landscape in Thailand. Over the past half-decade or so, local television and film producers have released an increasing number of movies and TV drama serials featuring male–male romance—nang-wai (Y[aoi] movies) and siri-wai (Y[aoi] TV dramas)—attracting an unprecedented number of fans and fandoms at home and abroad. By mimicking the recurring tropes within Japanese BL media—and borrowing Chinese BL themes— Thailand has been reinventing the Japanese-originated genre to create its own BL—perhaps most aptly termed the “wai” (Y[aoi]) genre, at least to the extent that the genre can be considered distinct from BL elsewhere. Just a few decades ago, Japanese narratives about beautiful boys arrived in Thailand, and, queer as it seems, these have burgeoned into a significant force in Thai culture.

Notes  1. Noboru Toyoshima, “Consuming Japan: The Consumption of Japanese Cultural Products in Thailand,” Ph.D. thesis, Waseda University, 2011, 4–7. 2.  Toyoshima, “Consuming Japan,” 63–64. 3.  Rop Ponchamni, “Future Possibilities of Comics in Thailand,” ABD 34, no. 1 (2003), http://www.accu.or.jp/appreb/report/abd/34‑1/abd3413.html.

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4.  Yanathorn Jiararattanakul, “YAOI: Kartoon gay doy phuhying pheu phuhying,” M.A. thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 2007, 46. 5. Prepanod Nainapat, “Kartoon Y ‘Yaoi’ jak phunthi sadang phlang khong phuhying su karn pen su bantheing thi peid kwang,” The Matter, https://thematter.co/rave/yaoi-from-then-to-now/8753; Aoike Yasuko, Eroika yori ai o komete, 31 vols. (1976–2012; Tokyo: Akita Shoten, 1978–2012). 6.  Ponchamni, “Future Possibilities of Comics in Thailand.” 7.  Takahashi Mako, Diary . . . rak si muang (Bangkok: Animate Group, 2010); Homerun Ken, Ja pid mai tha raow ja rak kan (Bangkok: Animate Group, 2010). 8.  For a more extensive discussion of Thai BL fan terminology, refer to Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge’s chapter in this volume. 9. Poowin Bunyavejchewin, “Reading Boys Love (BL) Manga in Thailand: A Preliminary Study of Thai BL Reader Preferences,” paper presented at the 5th Biennial International Conference of the Japanese Studies Association in Southeast Asia, Cebu City, Philippines, December 15–16, 2016. 10.  On Japan, see Mark McLelland, “Why Are Japanese Girls’ Comics Full of Boys Bonking?” Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media 10 (2006/2007), https://refractory-journal.com/why-are-japanese-girls-comics-full-of-boys -bonking1-mark-mclelland/. 11. Kazumi Nagaike, Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 12. On moe in the context of BL fandom, see Patrick W. Galbraith, “Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among “Rotten Girls” in Contemporary Japan,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 1 (2011). 13.  Dru Pagliassotti, “Better than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and Male/Male Romantic Fiction,” in Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre, ed. Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliassotti (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010). 14. Allen & Overy, “Coalition of Stakeholders against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children on the Internet: Legal Framework and Obstacles in the APAC Region” (Alexandria, VA: International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2012), https://www.icmec.org/coalition -of-stakeholder-against-commercial-sexual-exploitation-of-children-on-the -internet-legal-framework-and-obstacles-in-the-apac-region/, 142. 15.  Allen & Overy, “Coalition of Stakeholders.”



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16. Thai law does not differentiate between “obscene” and “pornographic” materials, and the same word contains both meanings simultaneously. 17. Chalisa Magpanthong and Drew McDaniel, “Obscenity and the Internet: A Case Study of U.S. Law,” BU Academic Review 13, no. 2 (2014): 45. 18.  Panadda Peecharoen, “Khwamchop duai kotmai khong nangsa kartun yipun praphet chai rak chai chak mummong niti setthasat,” M.A. thesis, Thammasat University, 2013. 19.  Jiararattanakul, “YAOI,” 37. 20.  The term “queer” is used here broadly to refer to nonheteronormative sexualities. 21.  Peter A. Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting: The Myth of a Thai ‘Gay Paradise’,” in Genders & Sexualities in Modern Thailand, ed. Peter A. Jackson and Nerida M. Cook (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999), 226–230. 22.  Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting,” 238. 23.  Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting,” 238. 24.  Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting,” 238–239. 25.  Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting,” 227. 26.  Serhat Ünaldi, “Back in the Spotlight: The Cinematic Regime of Representation of Kathoeys and Gay Men in Thailand,” in Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights, ed. Peter A. Jackson (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 61. 27.  Jackson, “Tolerant but Unaccepting,” 237–238. 28.  See also Sun Jung, “The Shared Imagination of Bishōnen, Pan-East Asian Soft Masculinity: Reading DBSK, Youtube.com and Transcultural New Media Consumption,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 20 (2009), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/jung.htm. 29. Chookiat Sakveerakul, Rak haeng Siam (Bangkok: Sahamongkol Film International, 2007). 30. Brett Farmer, “Loves of Siam: Contemporary Thai Cinema and Vernacular Queerness,” in Jackson, Queer Bangkok.

chapter 15

Faen of Gay Faen Realizing Boys Love in Thailand betwixt Imagination and Existence Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge

Today (July 6, 2014), I’m following Millenium Boy [sic] (MB) on a Bangkok tour. Actually, I’m limited to following part of MB. Like EXO, the K-pop boy band that they cover, MB has a K-subgroup and an M-subgroup, each with six members that together form the whole twelve-member group. In the morning, MB-K and MB-M are performing separately as brand promoters for Jaymart (an electronics goods chain) at CentralPlaza Ladprao and at Central World, two malls owned by the Central department stores conglomerate. In the afternoon, they will be performing together at MCC the Mall Bangkapi as headliners for a national youth K-pop cover dance competition sponsored by Dutch Mill milk. Participants must be under twenty years of age. The grand prize is 200,000 Thai baht for the group (about 6,500 US dollars, or twenty-eight months’ salary for an entry-level civil servant). The prize money for competitions has risen quickly, doubling in a few years. The competition at the Mall Bangkapi is huge and long: four hours. A famous Thai pop star, Film, is one of the headline performers. His fans are in full force, surrounding the stage with their signs. The other headliner is MB, who won the K-Pop Cover Dance Festival championship in Korea in 2013. MB’s fans are significantly more numerous and younger. When the event finishes, more people, mostly girls, rush to take selfies and get autographs from MB than from Film. Is it strange that a group of young boys cover dancing to K-pop would garner more attention than a pop star singing his own songs at a free event at a shopping mall-cum-convention center? Perhaps it depends on how much you believe in the power of boys love (BL).

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Origins and Proliferations In Thailand, yaoi, an older, Japanese word for BL that continues to be used by Thai fans, is often defined as a “gay cartoon,” as Poowin Bunyavejchewin notes in this volume. In the last few years, BL, yaoi, and gay (and sometimes lesbian) genres or forms have converged in Thailand. Additionally, the Thai, Japanese, Korean, and other global origins of BL are increasingly difficult to disentangle. Thai BL enthusiasts generally assimilate imagery and references from Korea and Japan but repackage and return them. Thailand plays a medial role in BL dramas regionally, acting as a node where popular culture is indigenized, reformulated, and then consumed abroad in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South America, as well as in the “originator” countries of Korea and Japan. Thailand’s production of BL content is branded by its “gay/transgender paradise” status. The cachet of Thai BL rests significantly upon the inclusion of “real” gays. In this chapter, I explore unexpected connections and the dialogical relationships between various constituents and forms of BL fandom in Thailand. Specifically, I show how BL has come to encompass gay couples in Thailand, critically blurring the line between fantasy and reality that often differentiates “BL” from “gay” genres. This research emerges from my interest in the indigenization, repackaging, and recirculation of East Asian popular culture throughout East/Southeast Asia that emerged from participant observation, interviews, and the collection of media artifacts during dissertation fieldwork from 2009 to 2011. Since 2012, I have visited Thailand for approximately one to two months annually, continuing research about race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality under the themes of beauty and love. I have conducted twenty interviews with ten gay K-pop cover dancers, eight tom (butch lesbians) who emulate Korean flower boy style, and two young women who identify as ting-kaoli and sao-wai (Korean wave and BL fans), specifically about “Korpanese” fan culture participation. I have also specifically followed the K-pop cover scene online and at events in Bangkok as well as the explosion of BL drama series and related media. Briefly, I define “Korpanese” as an imagined source of East Asian modernity in the contemporary Thai context just as China can be imagined as a source of East Asian tradition. From a commonplace Thai perspective, Korea and Japan are inextricably tied together—for example, when eating sushi that comes with kimchi served in a Japanese restaurant

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with hostesses wearing hanbok while K-pop is played in the background. Regarding BL, Korpanese media becomes a primary but hybridized source. While Thai BL fans acknowledge the Japanese origins of BL, the materials they use to construct BL images are now typically Korean, which are themselves K-branded echoes of Japanese BL. BL is thus often associated with Hallyu, the Asian and global “Korean Wave” of popular culture dating back to the first decade of the 2000s. Furthermore, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino fans often assume that BL originates from Thailand because of its substantial productions.1 Global BL, and especially Korpanese-influenced Thai material, is enmeshed in multiple overlapping flows that obfuscate its Japanese prosumer (producer-consumer) origins. Yet, Thais are now proliferating BL not only through local fan productions such as scanlations, fiction, and online shows, but through films that play in theaters and series on terrestrial TV. In what follows, I hope to contextualize BL circulation and prosumer fandom within the context of contemporary Thai mediascapes. In so doing, I draw on ongoing debates about homosexuality, male effeminacy, and gender expression more broadly, something I have referred to as the “crisis of Thai masculinity,” a sense that heterosexual women are unable to find heterosexual male partners, amid continual political turmoil.2 As Peter Jackson has noted, the 2014 coup of General Prayuth Chanocha is widely speculated to have ensured the current royal succession and a general realignment of politics that increases military influence. What does not threaten the mutual consolidation of royal and military power and the political ascendency of traditional elites can be deemed frivolous and merely pop-cultural. Thus, times of dictatorship do not necessarily repress queer media, and may in fact, provide a space for it to thrive.3

Key Terms and Stakeholders Stakeholders that idolize, enact, and critique boys love practices have developed a lexicon. An important facet of the BL genre is that it focuses on couples of male-bodied individuals, typically youth. Thus, many facets of Thai BL are related to the term khu (คู่ couple). In Thai, faen (แฟน), a relexification of the English word “fan,” has two distinct meanings. First, as in English, faen refers to a person devoted to an athlete, screen star, musical group, or to an enthusiast of a product, style, or ­cultural trend. This is often accomplished through identification with a fan club (แฟนคลับ faen-khlap), such as dom-phi ด้อมผี, used specifically to



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refer to the fans of EXO-L). Second, faen also refers to a romantic partner such as boyfriend, girlfriend, or even spouse. The differentiation and conflation of various faen will become more apparent when examining relationships between boy-couples and the idolization of those relationships by fans, primarily adoring young women and “sissies.” The Thai transliteration of “boys love” is “boi-loef” (บอยส์เลิฟ or บอยเลิฟ). As in other parts of the world, distinctions are made between subgenres such as “chonen-ai” (โชเน็นไอ), in Japanese shōnen’ai, and “ya-o-i” (ยะโอะอิ), yaoi, the latter being more sexual. Yaoi, however, is sometimes mistakenly translated as the Japanese term for “gay.” In Thai, boy-couples are referred to primarily as khu-wai (คูว่ าย), where khu refers to a couple and wai is an abbreviation of “yaoi.” This plays with the sound of the Japanese term meaning cute, “kawaii.” Khu-wai are generally expected to be “cute,” “soft,” and “sweet” young men. Yet, like in other parts of the world, genre categories typically overlap, often interchangeably.4 The most important expression is the letter “Y” (วาย wai), an abbreviation of yaoi that also is sometimes said to reference the male Y chromosome or the current social media savvy generation Y. “Y” comes into Thai through the English transliteration of Japanese “yaoi.” The Thai equivalent of the Japanese fujoshi, or female BL/yaoi fanatic, is a “sao-wai” (สาววาย), or Y-girl, a young woman into yaoi. (It should be noted, however, that there are quite possibly more gay, lesbian, and heterosexual male fans of BL in Thailand than in other national fandoms.)5 Sao-wai have extensive online communities and overlap with another group that has a major offline presence, “sao-ting” or “ting” (สาวติ่ง or ติ่ง). Ting literally means appendage or something stuck on, as in “ting ้ skin tag. Thus, it refers to an adherent or, in fan terms, neua” (ติ่งเนือ), a “groupie.” However, in contemporary Thailand the term has a specific reference, which is “ting-kaoli” (ติ่งเกาหลี), meaning “Koreaboo.” Adapted from “weeaboo,” referring to fans of Japanese culture, a Koreaboo is an obsessive non-Korean devotee of Korean music, dramas, film, manhwa (manga), fashion, cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, and food. While sao-wai might stay home and watch BL movies online, ting are out visibly following, screaming after, and giving gifts to Korean stars, as well as taking selfies with K-pop cover dancers, and now khu-wai.6 Both sao-wai and ting are stereotyped as K-wave social media addicts living in a romantic fantasy world, learning the Korean language, binge watching K-dramas, impatiently awaiting future releases, and hyperemotional. Because of their physical presence in public (at events such as concerts

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or cover dance competitions and homecomings of their idols) ting are particularly criticized in public discourse and are routinely referred to as “Korea-crazed” by social conservatives, nationalists, and gay men who find BL offensive. In short, sao-wai and ting are faen of cute-boy culture—whether in anime, self-published stories, or dramas. The boys they are after are also coupled (faen) in relationships, both imagined and real. Sao-wai have a specific type (sapek, สเป็ค) they are attracted to, which is the gay-sao, literally “girly gay.” Sao-wai practice “shipping” (short for “relationshipping”) of K-pop idols, in which two presumably heterosexual band members are imagined to be in relationships with each other. A “chippoe” (ชิปเปอร์) shipper, is the fan of a “khu-chip” (คู่ชิป) relationship, such as Hunhan (Sehun and Luhan of EXO). Shippers bond when they idolize the same (relation)ship, refashioning the Thai idiom “long reua lam diao kan” (ลงเรือลำ�เดียวกัน), meaning to have the same fate (“be in the same boat”), to signify having the same ship interests.7 Ships are often represented through photoshopped images where band members are cut and pasted together or in the reframing of publicity photos as romantic, either by changing the context or adding flourishes such as hearts (fig. 15.1). “Fan service” images, in which idols hug or kiss each other specifically to excite their shipper fans, are highly prized. Shipping is not limited to khu-wai. Imagined khu-wai are part of a broader category of “khu-jin” (คู่จน), ิ ้ imagined couples from the term “jintana” (จินตนา), to imagine. In khu-jin, heterosexual or homosexual (including female–female) co-actors in films or dramas—or those seen in public together—are projected to be real couples as fodder for gossip magazines based on rumors, backstage pictures, and paparazzi photos. Yet, online, and in the world of social media, imagined couples take a decidedly queer bent.

From Boys Love to “Gay-Love” Numerous scholars note that BL in Japan focuses on fantasy representations produced and consumed by women rather than on actual male homosexuality.8 Nevertheless, BL fans are not only heterosexual women. Thomas Baudinette notes that gay men are avid readers, and James Welker describes how BL can be a formative influence on lesbians.9 In Thailand, BL and gay media are increasingly overlapping—lists commonly mix these genres. Indeed, while “gay” can remain a genre on



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Figure 15.1. Uncredited Super Junior fan shipping of EunHae circulating online.

its own, it can simultaneously be a subgenre of BL and vice versa. Media produced by and for gay men is avidly consumed by sao-wai, and BL media is equally enticing to some gays, especially gay-sao. What is perhaps unique to Thailand is that, from approximately 2010, khu-wai shipping has expanded from an activity dedicated to idols to one that also incorporates local “demi-idols,” such as Thai K-pop cover dancers rather than the K-pop stars themselves (fig. 15.2). This is made possible because of the extensive cover dance scene in Thailand and a proliferation of competitions sponsored by malls, corporations, and brands. This, in particular, is one way that BL fandom in Thailand diverges from BL fandom in Japan and other places. The boundary between imagined and real couples is increasingly blurred. The fantasy shipping practices of sao-wai and ting coalesced and was actualized in public space in 2012 through a new iteration of khu-wai as “khu-rak-gay” (คู่รักเกย์), gay-love couples or loving gay-couples. The gay-love couple overlaps with khu-wai but can be distinguished from broader BL conventions in that the couple actually is gay or plays being gay characters; they

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Figure 15.2. Uncredited fan shipping of Thai K-pop cover dancers including Coco (left).

are not heterosexual men imagined to be a couple or men who are incidentally in a relationship even though they are not gay. Furthermore, khu-rak-gay are not necessarily cutesy teenage boy-couples (khu-rak-gaywairun, คู่รักเกย์วัยรุ่น) typical of BL drama series. Coupled gay-maen, masculine gay men, constitute khu-gay (คู่เกย์), that is a gay-couple of two masculine men. Nevertheless, the “softer” gay couples are still much more popular among sao-wai.10



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The fact that BL fandom now incorporates self-identified gays reveals a striking evolution of sao-wai practices. Coco is a professional K-pop cover dancer and a local demi-idol. He was one of the leaders of Boys Generation (covering Girls Generation) and now is a leader of MB. MB hold fan meets and sell paraphernalia. The group became so popular internationally, surpassing 100,000 Facebook likes in 2013, that S.M. Entertainment (EXO’s corporate owner) threatened MB with a copyright lawsuit in 2014. MB, in K-pop fashion, released an apology video in Thai and Korean with English subtitles. Coco was a popular figure with sao-wai and ting. As a K-pop cover dancer, Coco was shipped with other members of both Boys Generation and MB. In 2013, the independent studio mrbigpicture released Boy’s Stories: The Movie, a documentary about seven Thai gay couples. Advertising referred to them as khu-jin, but the film centered on talking-head style interviews of how couples met and portrayed their daily lives. The film spawned fandom for the couples, who held “meet and greet” sessions and sold T-shirts. Later in the year, MB won the K-pop Cover Dance Festival in Korea, catapulting them to national stardom. When they returned to Thailand, MB were greeted at the airport as idols. They subsequently were featured on national news and entertainment programs. Having incorporated gays into the fold of BL, sao-wai and ting fandom led to a new practice: the adoration of actual gay couples. Whereas heterosexual male celebrities were shipped as khu-jin and khu-wai, in the new practices of khu-rak-gay cute young gay couples were made into minor celebrities. The direction from stardom producing imagined gayness was reversed to real gayness producing stardom. Attractive gay couples themselves and their fans started posting Facebook pics and YouTube videos of the couple in everyday life, shopping at malls, eating at restaurants, riding the Skytrain, and sharing intimate moments. Popular couples have become social media sweethearts, are interviewed on television and radio shows, promote fashion and beauty products, host fan meets, and are greeted at sites like the airport as if they were celebrities.11 One of the most marketized couples is Both–New Year (BNY; fig. 15.3). When BNY began their relationship in February 2012, Both (Nattapong Chinsoponsap) was a VJ at Channel V Thailand and New Year (Kitiwhut Sawutdimilin) was applying to study psychology at prestigious Chulalongkorn University. Their cuteness as a real couple made them stars among sao-wai. That is, yaoi became realized among khu-rak-gay in Thailand.

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Figure 15.3. Both and New Year in an image taken from a Tales Cosmetics advertisement and posted, uncredited, on the Vietnamese gay blog Asian Boys Love Paradise, later circulating online.

Realizing Gays and Fantastic Realities Gay in Thai is considered distinct from kathoey, a local term for trans women, though categorical variations often elide the two groups.12 Gay men increasingly distinguish between maen-maen (แมนๆ, manly) and gay-sao (เกย์สาว or ออกสาว, ok-sao, girly). The latter more commonly are referred to, including self-referentially, as tut (ตุ๊ด), queen or sissy. Sissies, or young feminine gays, are the type most desired and idolized by sao-wai. While gay-maen pairings have become ubiquitous in mainstream gay media, acceptance for gay-sao couples is rising among gay men and more broadly, probably in line with BL consumption. Gaymaen sometimes openly ridicule or express disgust for both kathoey and gay-sao. Gay-maen also typically denigrate BL. Some Japanese gay men have actively resisted BL imagery and have developed a manga style of their own.13 For masculine gays, the obsession of sao-wai and ting for gay-sao is humorous at best. More often, the desire is considered bizarre or pathological, and antithetical to the desires and lived experiences of “real” gay men.14 Cartoons on the gay-focused GThai website and related



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Facebook page, for example, mock sao-wai and ting obsession over gaysao. Ironically, these are sometimes recirculated online labelled as yaoi. Gay cultural acceptance in Thailand and BL are in a tense, sometimes antagonistic, but essentially dialogical relationship. Though masculine gay men actively resist BL imagery, the popularity of BL is likely increasing tolerance for actual homosexuality in Thai society. This, in turn, is proliferating queer representations that are consumed by both sao-wai and gays. Gay-sao often express that sao-wai and ting and other female friends’ desires for BL media and fandom provides common ground supporting social acceptance of homosexuality.15 The Thai language has developed the sexuality category “cherry” (choe-ri, เชอร์ร่)— ี women who have a sexual preference for gays/kathoey.16 This perhaps is another evolution of BL fantasy into reality. The relationship of BL film and television is enmeshed in complex ways to lived realities. For example, Love of Siam (Rak haeng Sayam, dir., Chookiat Sakveerakul 2007) can be thought of as a runaway BL hit. Advertisements for the film, which suggested relationships between two boys and two girls, made it seem like a typical teen romance. The fact that the boys are the lovers was not alluded to in the promotional materials, and thus angered some viewers who felt duped by ostensibly heterosexual romance.17 This film was wildly popular in Thailand and abroad, primarily in Asia. The same year, Bangkok Love Story (Phuean . . . ku rak mueng wa, dir., Poj Arnon 2007)—which was meant to be a masc-gay blockbuster like Brokeback Mountain (dir., Ang Lee 2005)—flopped.18 Poj was accused of spreading rumors that the actors were involved in a romantic relationship, using BL tactics to sell a gay film. However, this marketing strategy failed. Unlike Love of Siam, the film was popular with gay men but not with sao-wai. Sao-wai generally prefer images of gay-sao as opposed to gay-maen. Tastes continue to evolve, however, in part through the ongoing interactions of sao-wai and gay-sao, the latter of whom idolize both BL and gay genres. BL, yaoi, gay, and LGBT constitute related genres on orthogonal continua of fantasy–reality, romantic–sexual, and Asian–Western. BL and gay genres are conjoined. What might have seemed like inappropriate labelling several years ago is now being increasingly conflated as khu-jin, khu-wai, or khu-rak-gay. Fan practices are dissolving the hard line between imagined and actual homosexuality. In 2013, Hormones: The Series (Hormones: Wai wawun, GMM Tai Hub, modeled on the 2008 movie Hormones) broadcast the first of three seasons of the television

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series that included a young gay couple. This series and the ongoing popularity of gay films produced outside the mainstream studio system sparked an explosion in alternative gay films and BL dramas distinct from previous genres of kathoey or gay media. While targeting different segments, over twenty gay/BL drama series were produced between 2013 and 2017: including the gay HIV-prevention series GayOK Bangkok and Diary of Tootsies (Daiari tutsi), and a vast number of BL series, often based on a film, with titles such as Love Sick, My Bromance (Phi chai: My Bromance), and Water Boyy. These rely upon Korpanese elements. Water Boyy, for example, is titled after a Japanese movie (Waterboys, 2001; dir. Shinobu Yaguchi) and incorporates the complicated relationship characteristics typical of K-dramas. By December 2019, there were enough series that an English-language poll for “Best Thai BL Drama” had fiftynine listings from major studios, excluding alternative productions.19 Beyond the huge explosion of media catering to sao-wai and gays, BL couples are also prominent off-screen. Sao-wai now literally stalk khu-rakgay in public. Sao-wai and ting have developed their BL-gaydar. Once the alarms are triggered, sao-wai and ting discreetly follow khu-rak-gay who hold hands, wear matching outfits, or are affectionate. Sao-wai and ting surreptitiously take pictures to post on social media: couple head-onshoulders in the train carriage, backsides of matching shirts, cute boys sharing a banana split. Sao-wai can smile at Instafamous (social-mediafamous) couples. Couples who smile back can be approached for photos, selfies, and autographs. Guys are referred to by the Korean kinship term “oppa” (younger women’s appellation for “older brother,” boyfriend, or close friend). Khu-rak-gay are discernible in part because they reference codes of BL beauty conventions. Couples without a web following are generally not approached directly but rather photographed covertly when possible and documented online. Additionally, BL aesthetics are influencing gay cultural norms: for example, when gay couples recreate Japanese bishōnen (beautiful boy) and BL imagery in their own photos. Here, the distinction between fantasy and reality is being blurred in the reverse gaze of gay BL critics. Thais readily acknowledge that the public stalking of khu-rak-gay is possible because Thailand has many visibly gay men in contrast to Korea and Japan, where BL is common in media but gay couples are not commonly visible in public spaces. Additionally, the aesthetics of BL do not just influence gay style. Heterosexual Thai men often embody Korpanese soft masculinity, believing that this model attracts female desire, especially of sao-wai.



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Furthermore, tom are also emulating K-trends. K-dramas The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince (Keopi peurinseu 1-hojeom, MBC 2007), which was remade in Thailand in 2012, and You’re Beautiful (Minam isineyo, SBS 2009) are among the most cited by gay-sao, tom, and Thais more broadly. I have argued elsewhere, that young tom and gay-sao gender presentations have merged through a common basis in K-masculinity, which is partially dependent on BL aesthetics.20

Evolving Topographies In this chapter, I have described the rise of BL media, its contestations, and broader circulations in relation to the normalization of public homosexuality and lived gay lives. In this dialogical relationship, BL fandom enhances conditions for greater social acceptance of homosexuality. Mark McLelland, for instance, has examined Japanese disputes contrasting bishōnen and hypermasculine-gay representations to gay experience.21 In this volume, Gita Pramudita Prameswari, Wei Wei, Lakshmi Menon, and Peiti Wang help expand the discussion of the relationship between images of male homosexuality in BL and real gay men. What is unique to the Thai situation is that the khu-wai in fantasy and on screen have literally materialized. Actual gay couples embody BL aesthetics. The khu-rak-gay (gay-couple of two young femme males), and, to a lesser extent, the khu-gay (gay-couple of two masculine men) realize the idealized romance of khu-jin-gay (imagined gay-couple) for young women. The khu-rak-gay signifies both a gay-couple-in-love with each other as well as a gay-couple-that-is-loved by others, a distinction often conflated by BL consumers. The worldings of BL have increasingly penetrated mainstream media and gay lifeworlds. Cute boys exist in real life, are shaped by, and actively shape their portrayals, simultaneously emulating and resisting common tropes of BL and gay genres. Couples are made into idols via khu-wai, a Thai reworking of BL fan practices. Strikingly, these newly celebritized gay couples reverse the prior practice of using idols to create imagined couples. Rather, real gay couples are turned into stars. Recent Thai developments and trends in BL fandom index increasing acceptance of public homoeroticism and influence in the re-mediation of cultural flows that make locally palpable the tastes of modern, cosmopolitan “Asia.”

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Notes 1   .  See, e.g., Thomas Baudinette, “Creative Misreadings of ‘Thai BL’ by a Filipino Fan Community: Dislocating Knowledge Production in Transnational Queer Fandoms through Aspirational Consumption,” Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020). 2.  Dredge Byung’chu Käng, “Kathoey ‘In Trend’: Emergent Genderscapes, National Anxieties and the Re-Signification of Male-Bodied Effeminacy in Thailand,” Asian Studies Review 36, no. 4 (2012); and Kang Dredge Byung’chu, “Surfing the Korean Wave: Wonder Gays and the Crisis of Thai Masculinity,” Visual Anthropology 31, nos. 1–2 (2018). 3.  Peter A. Jackson, “A Grateful Son, a Military King: Thai Media Accounts of the Accession of Rama X to the Throne,” ISEAS Perspective, April 26, 2017, https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2017_26. pdf; and Peter A. Jackson, “The Thai Regime of Images,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 19, no. 2 (2004); compare with Poowin Bunyavejchewin in this volume. 4.  Mark McLelland and James Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 5. Dru Pagliassotti, “Reading Boys’ Love in the West,” Particip@tions 5, no. 2 (November 2008), http://www.participations.org/Volume%205 /Issue%202/5_02_pagliassotti.htm. 6. Dredge Byung’chu Käng, “Idols of Development: Transnational Transgender Performance in Thai K-Pop Cover Dance,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (2014); and Dredge Byung’chu Käng, “Cultivating Demi-Idols: The Queer Convergence of New Media and Korean Dance Performance in Thailand,” in New Media Configurations and Socio-Cultural Dynamics in Asia and the Arab World, ed. Nadja-Christina Schneider and Carola Richter (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2015). 7.  The ship/boat metaphor is also extended in the term เรือล่ม (reua lom), to capsize a boat, which is used when a ship-couple breaks up or there is news that makes you feel disappointed in their relationship. 8.  McLelland and Welker, “An Introduction to ‘Boys Love’ in Japan.” 9.  Thomas Baudinette, “Japanese Gay Men’s Attitudes towards ‘Gay Manga’ and the Problem of Genre,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 3, no. 1 (2017), and “Creative Misreadings of ‘Thai BL’”; and James Welker, “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love



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in Shôjo Manga,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31, no. 3 (2006). 10.  According to Megan Sinnott, since the turn of the century tom have taken on a new sexuality of tom-gay (tom with tom), which was previously considered inconceivable when tom-dee was the norm. In my observations and interviews, tom-gay couples now look startlingly like khu-wai; however, they deny any association with BL aesthetics. Rather, tom-gay are modeling K-masculinity, which, when paired, appears khu-wai. See Megan Sinnott, Toms and Dees: Transgender Identity and Female Same-Sex Relationships in Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), and “Korean-Pop, Tom Gay Kings, Les Queens and the Capitalist Transformation of Sex/ Gender Categories in Thailand,” Asian Studies Review 36, no. 4 (2012). 11.  Khu-rak-gay promote beauty products to women. Beauty products promoted to gay men use masculine models. 12.  Käng, “Kathoey ‘In Trend’.” 13.  See, for example, Anne Ishii, Graham Kolbeins, and Chip Kidd, eds., Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2014). 14. As a form of popular culture resistance to Japanese patriarchy, see Mark J. McLelland, “The Love between ‘Beautiful Boys’ in Japanese Women’s Comics,” Journal of Gender Studies 9, no. 1 (2000). 15. BL has also sparked an interest among some fans in the lives of real gay men in Japan, which has been linked to an increase in media attention. Ishida Hitoshi links shōnen’ai to the 1990s gay boom in Japanese media and to a problematic sense of sympathy (kyōkan) toward gay men by women. See Ishida Hitoshi, “Gei ni kyōkan suru joseitachi,” Yurīka 39, no. 7 (June 2007); see also Wim Lunsing, “‘Gay Boom’ in Japan: Changing Views of Homosexuality?” Thamyris 4 (1997). For a discussion of female readers of the homo magazine Barazoku, see James Welker, “Flower Tribes and Female Desire: Complicating Early Female Consumption of Male Homosexuality in Shōjo Manga,” Mechademia 6, no. 1 (2011). 16.  Heterosexual women’s attraction to gay men has been documented in other parts of Asia such as Japan. For an early example, see Wim Lunsing, “Japanese Gay Magazines and Marriage Advertisements,” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services 3, no. 3 (1995). 17. Brett Farmer, “Loves of Siam: Contemporary Thai Cinema and Vernacular Queerness,” in Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights, ed. Peter A. Jackson (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011).

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18. Chris Berry argues that the reception of Brokeback Mountain in China must partially be understood through the popularity of BL. See his “The Chinese Side of the Mountain,” Film Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2007). 19.  Salty_bae, “Best Thai BL Drama,” MyDramaList, December 12, 2019, https://mydramalist.com/list/q1XvWeb3. 20.  Dredge Byung’chu Kang-Nguyen, “The Softening of Butches: The Adoption of Korean ‘Soft’ Masculinity among Thai Toms,” in Pop Empires: Transnational and Diasporic Flows of India and Korea, ed. S. Heijin Lee, Monika Mehta, and Robert Ji-Song Ku (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019). 21. Mark J. McLelland, Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities (Richmond, U.K.: Curzon: 2000).

Part I I I

South Asia

chapter 16

Desi Desu Sex, Sexuality, and BL Consumption in Urban India Lakshmi Menon

Is there a readership of boys love (BL) manga in India? At first glance, the easiest answer to that question would be no. Manga and anime fans in general still comprise a fledgling fandom on the subcontinent, and one could assume the conservative nature of present-day India as a hindrance for potential fans of BL. And yet India, like much of the rest of Asia, not only has fans of BL, but, arguably, a BL fan community. In contrast with Japan, where BL originated, and other Asian countries discussed elsewhere in this volume, this community is rather difficult to find and, consequently, to study, for several important reasons. The first is the fact that, despite having a rich cultural history with regard to the representation of sexuality, present-day India is a very conservative society. Homosexuality was criminalized until very recently and remains, by and large, taboo. Further, and at least as importantly, it is a country where the mere idea of women discussing matters of sexuality, much less homoerotica, is highly stigmatized. Nevertheless, it is India’s community of fans to which I turn my attention in the following pages. I begin this chapter with an overview of the history of anime and manga in India, the former of which was accessible to anyone who could avail themselves of a television upon its introduction in the early 1990s but which has more recently become inaccessible to a great majority of the population, making the anime fan demographic an urban upperand middle-class, English-speaking one. Within this demographic, I locate India’s BL fans as being mostly in the subcontinent’s larger cities. In the next part of the chapter, through an examination of the results of an online survey that I conducted as well as my own interaction with these fans, I examine prevalent attitudes toward sex and sexuality in

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India, and how exposure to BL has affected Indian women’s views of sexuality and the LGBT community. Lastly, I look at how the Indian BL fandom operates in comparison with other BL fan communities, including Japan and other parts of Asia, as well as the global anglophone BL fan community. As this chapter will reveal, although India’s BL fan community has yet to develop unique fan practices or produce a significant amount of local BL content, it has found within BL the tools for understanding aspects of sexuality and developing a resistance to dominant gender ideologies.

Anime and Manga in India India has been exposed to anime texts since the early 1990s, beginning with the broadcast of Nippon Animation’s The Jungle Book (Janguru bukku shōnen Mōguri), dubbed into Hindi, on the government-run Doordarshan channel in 1992. Both the story and the localization made The Jungle Book indistinguishable as foreign media, however, and anime only began to be identified as Japanese when the cable TV channel Star Plus began airing English-dubbed anime series such as Robotech in 1993, followed by Sony’s AXN channel developing an anime exclusive slot in 1997. In 2001, the Toonami slot on India’s Cartoon Network started to air Pokemon, Dragonball Z, and later Naruto, which brought in a younger audience, augmented by the launch of Sony’s short-lived anime-only channel, Animax India, in 2004. A selection of anime is accessible via the Indian Amazon Prime and Netflix streaming services as well, but many potential consumers are reluctant to pay for what they can obtain for free through illegal filesharing and streaming sites. And, whether or not they pay for access through official channels, given the limited number and seedy nature of Internet cafes, access to the Internet itself is largely limited to middle- and upper-class Indians. Despite the difficulty in obtaining access to anime, however, fan activities do take place regularly in India. Indian otaku flock to cosplay competitions both at comic conventions and at the Cool Japan festival in Mumbai every year. Fans stay connected through Internet forums like the now defunct but once major forum Animestan and Facebook groups like India Anime Club (formerly animeindia), which, at the height of anime’s popularity in India grew from small groups with tens to a few hundred members, and now are large enough to operate with active regional chapters and specific anime fan groups for different



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states and cities. A quick look at these groups reveals that a large majority of their participants and on many anime/manga forums are males who are inclined to consume shōnen (boys’) fare such as Naruto, Bleach, and Gintama. One of the primary reasons, I postulate, for this gender divide is the norms connected to the kind of media Indian women are expected to consume. Several of the participants in my survey pointed out that the biggest challenge to being a fan of any kind of anime in India is that the majority of the population have written off the entire medium as meant for children. A large number of women are therefore reluctant to indulge in fan practices due to ideas of propriety. Technology is an important factor in studying India’s association with anime and manga in that, as mentioned above, fans turn to illegal uploads of fan-translated anime and manga. Access to anime is, therefore, directly connected to access to technology such as highspeed Internet connections. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in its 2017 Internet in India report revealed that while Internet penetration has been steadily increasing in the country, there is a visible gender gap pervading its usage. Out of 481 million Internet users, only 143 million are female, just 30 percent.1 Further, the urban–rural divide is also a stark one—the former revealing roughly 64 percent Internet usage as compared to the latter’s approximately 20 percent.2 Given that the urban population of India is much smaller than the rural one, the digital divide is far more acute than the numbers show. We cannot, therefore, overlook the gender and class divides that restrict access to anime and manga, as well as curtail active participation in fandoms.

Gender and Sexuality in India In stark contrast with the population of both Internet users and anime/ manga fans, BL fandom in India consists largely, if not entirely, of a female readership, as evidenced by my own engagement with this population. The respondents to my survey have all identified themselves as cisgender women. Any male readers of BL who encountered my survey may have been reluctant to identify themselves and refrained from participating. It is important to note this all-female demographic in light of Indian society’s rigid views on female sexuality—similar to those that prevail in many Southeast Asian countries—that would not traditionally allow women to engage in consuming or discussing content such as BL.

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BL by nature of its focus on same-sex relationships and frequent depiction of sexual activities would contradict the idea of propriety of conduct or modesty (vinaya in Sanskrit) that is integrated in the early education of most Indian women. Those who go against the code of propriety are expected to feel what can be defined in English as guilt, shame, or a combination of both in a word that has equivalents in nearly every Indian language—lajja in languages such as Hindi, Bengali, and other Indo-Aryan languages, naanam in Dravidian languages such as Malayalam. The expression or even discussion of female sexuality or gender roles is high on the list of taboos.3 In an India that is entrenched in right-wing conservatism, media censorship also makes it difficult for women to find channels through which sexuality and its paradigms can be understood. While it would be easy to imagine that this mindset has begun to shift with the cosmopolitan nature of the younger generations, of the twenty women I interviewed, just two identified themselves to me as bi- or pansexual—but both were quick to add that they had not revealed their queer identities to their families. Apart from some cases in the urban upper-middle class, family spaces continue to be conservative—arranged marriages, for instance, are still the norm. Anthropologist Henrike Donner and sociologist Jyoti Puri both reflect on the experiences of middle-class women in the cities of India in observing the emphasis on chastity and respectability that they face from a young age and well into adulthood.4 Ketaki Chowkdhani’s study of Indian women’s consumption of pornography points out that a majority of the young, urban women in her surveys felt “a sense of guilt or shame stemming not just from the fact that they might be discovered, but from a deep seated sense of ‘immorality’ of watching pornography.”5 For many women, viewing and enjoying sexually explicit material has always been fraught with fear of judgment and the constant risk of being found out and exposed for being inappropriate, a “search for pleasure shadowed by the spectre of virtue.”6 This idea of constant negotiation between desire and guilt is also reflected in Radhika Parameswaran’s work on the consumption of Western romance fiction—particularly the Harlequin Mills & Boone books—by urban middle-class Indian women. The larger society judges these books as being highly inappropriate, making the act of reading such books and defending to themselves their right to do so an act of resistance. This resistance is, however, ridden with contradictory



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feelings of shame and anxiety, arising from their “reactions to patriarchal constructions of women as pure and asexual.”7 In the same way that a transgressing female body is considered an affront to the essentialist ideas of Indian culture, the queer body is also socially constructed as an affront to the “purity” of society. Homosexuality had been criminalized in India in 1860 under the colonial British government and remained so for nearly seventy years after Independence—it was only in 2018 that Article 377 of the Indian penal code was struck down by the Supreme Court, giving a new momentum to the LGBT movement in India. However, it must be pointed out that this movement is not without its limitations with regard to various forms of privilege and access, as lawyer and activist Alok Gupta points out. There is a noticeable difference in urban and rural contexts, and in the level of westernization and access to language, all of which cannot go ignored.8 The truth, therefore, remains that within the boundaries of family, home, and school, gaining acceptance of their sexuality and freedom to openly express their gender experiences still remains a constant struggle for many members of the queer community. Pride marches have been held in nearly all the major cities in India, but for the vast majority of the rural population, even the knowledge of alternate sexualities and queer identities remains distant.

Indian BL Fans Finding Each Other Online We have established that India’s atmosphere of conservatism makes it difficult to openly appreciate a genre such as BL, in spite of which a fandom does exist in the country, leading us to the question of where this fandom can be found. India’s BL fandom is one that is largely hidden behind layers of societal expectations and a sense of having a “dirty little secret” for many, and exists almost entirely in the space of the Internet. To better understand Indian BL fans, between 2016 and 2017 I interviewed via an online survey twenty individuals, some of whom I knew personally and others of whom responded to Facebook and Twitter posts seeking participants. The survey was written in English, which is also the language in which the participants responded. In the discussion to follow, I use only their given names or pseudonyms, the latter of which are indicated by quotation marks at first use, in order to preserve

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anonymity. Based on my own participant-observation in the fandom online and at conventions, I believe these respondents are largely representative of BL fandom in India. At the time of my survey the twenty women who responded were living in some of India’s largest cities—New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, and Kochi—although many of them had migrated to those cities for work or education from more rural areas. I have been able to identify certain common characteristics outside of their urban location. They range in age from their late teens to their late thirties, and they come from middle- or upper-middle-class families with access to higher education. Some of my respondents were at the time undergraduate or graduate students at reputable institutions where the medium of instruction is English, and others had graduated from such institutions and were employed in well-paying jobs in the IT industry or as lecturers in colleges and universities. In sum, based on these surveys as well as what I have observed of the fan community through participation, the average Indian BL fan is fluent in English, sufficiently affluent, and part of the aforementioned minority of women in India who have access to television and high-speed Internet and are active online. Through their responses, it is clear that Indian readers “discovered” BL in different ways. Some were introduced to it by close friends who were also interested in anime, others stumbled upon BL texts on forums. On being asked how she became interested in BL in the first place, “Sarita,” a twenty-one-year-old student from Bangalore, responded: “I have been active on anime related forums since I was 11. I came across one topic on Junjo Romantica on one such forum— Animestan if I recall correctly—and scrolled through the posts. The discussion I saw was something so different from what I’d read before and so intriguing that I immediately looked up the manga online. Of course, I never turned back. I was excited to see something so different and beautiful.”9 Others were introduced through their interaction with other texts that led them to discovering BL. For instance, interest in the series Cardcaptors, airing on Cartoon Network India, led fans to seek out the original Cardcaptor Sakura (Kādo kyaputā Sakura) manga and introduced them to the implicit queer relationship between Tōya and Yukito, and related fanworks. Many fans of GetBackers (Gettobakkāzu: Dakkanya) and Kyo Kara Maoh! (Kyō kara maō!), both of which aired on Animax India, had a similar experience. While popular works from



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the highly popular Japanese boys’ manga magazine Shōnen Jump are increasingly available in the Indian market, finding licensed print versions of BL works is difficult. The few works that do find their way into bookstores are quickly and furtively purchased by the fans who discover them. I happen to be the owner of a copy of Kannagi Satoru and Odagiri Hotaru’s 2002 work Only the Ring Finger Knows (Sono yubi dake ga shitteiru), which remained hidden in a desk at my parents’ house until I was able to get a bookshelf of my own, primarily out of fear of “being discovered.” Indian BL fans turn to the Internet for their BL consumption, accessing sites that illegally make available unlicensed scanlations, such as mangafox and mangago, and participating in forum discussions. Although there has been no concerted effort to organize Indian BL readers, they have been able to form a community in the space of the Internet. In many ways, they stand in opposition to the often overwhelmingly male space that is Indian anime/manga fandom. One online respondent to my survey, “Hema,” an undergrad student in Bangalore, said that she looked for other BL fans because, “The boys are just [too] stupid to appreciate anything. Everything that happens gay is ew or omg or that’s so wrong.”10 India’s BL fandom has constructed itself in a way that borrows several conventions from anglophone discourse, particularly terminology. Notably, as among many English-speaking fans elsewhere, for BL fans in India “yaoi” and “shounen-ai”—the latter derived from the Japanese word “shōnen’ai” and shortened by fans to “sho-ai”—are used to differentiate between manga with and without explicit sexual content respectively, whereas “BL” is either a general label or somewhere in the middle in terms of degree of explicitness. Many, particularly older fans who have spent a considerable amount of time within the fandom, have adopted the Japanese word for passionate female BL fan, “fujoshi”—often shortened in India to “fujo”—to describe themselves for lack of a better term. Indian fans accept how the corruption of the word “fujoshi”—a clever play on words in Japanese, implying fans of BL are “rotten girls”—in itself reflects how the women who read boys love consider themselves corrupters of texts, taking apart their heteronormative constructions and imbuing them with homoerotic content. This goes to show that an interest in BL, especially yaoi, is considered to be something that treads an ironic line between depravity and innocence.

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Sexuality and India’s BL Fan Community For Indian fans, much like those in other countries, finding others who share the same interests and building a fan community, regardless of how small it may be, are significant. Having established Indian BL fans as a somewhat hidden community of women located somewhere outside the mainstream, we can now examine how their exposure to the genre has allowed the community to emerge and to function as a space where discourse on lesbian, queer, and feminist activism can take place. This BL fan sphere has become for at least some fans what Kazumi Nagaike has described as a “dynamic space [which] allows women to participate in issues of female sexuality and identity such as bisexuality, homosociality and other modes that contest the hierarchized heterosexual paradigm.”11 Further, the BL genre constantly questions and pushes boundaries of accepted societal norms, the gender system, and human sexuality, including marriage, reproduction and parenthood, traditional concepts of family, and nonbiological family. Discussions on these topics are generally avoided for being “too serious” among women as per societal expectations, but through the bonds of community and being the subjects of sexual desire, the readers of BL are comfortable enough talking about their sexuality. As in the case of Indian women who consume pornography and erotica, it is only within this safe space of the fan community that these discussions take place without constant fear of censure. Access to a group of people with whom they can discuss their preferred texts has allowed BL fans to develop a sense of empowerment and sexual agency while simultaneously navigating what Chowkdhani calls a “complex web of negotiations,”12 allowing them to maintain their reputation and respectability. Delhi-based “Zehra,” one respondent to my survey, mentioned that one of her favorite things about BL was that “you could find yourself identifying with either top or bottom in a sex scene, as neither of them are women it [doesn’t] make . . . a huge difference,”13 while nineteenyear-old “Anu” from Kolkata shared how BL fandom has allowed her to discover and explore sexual fantasies freely: “I actually have a rape kink. I was really young when I discovered it but didn’t have a name for it, and my bestie was grossed out when I told her. But thanks to gay smut manga I can now own it.”14 Clearly, what India’s BL readers find in these fan spaces are judgment-free zones where they not only are able to discuss what they enjoy in the medium but also share their own ideas



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of sexuality and desire more broadly. This is in part, as is seen in Zehra’s response above, due to the absence of a female body in BL, making it a space “in which female readers needn’t consider the disadvantages of exposing their eroticism, since the mystified female sexual identity that fetters women in other forms of society is excluded from the male homosexual narratives of yaoi.”15 BL has also allowed women to explore other aspects of their sexuality. The two respondents to my survey who identify as queer cited their exposure to queer themes in BL manga as a major factor in helping them develop an understanding of alternative sexualities and leading them to think about themselves in similar terms. Many respondents agreed that their exposure to the genre at an early age played an important role in shaping their feelings about the LGBT community in general. For some, it was finding “gay” pairings in manga that even introduced them to the idea of homosexuality, as is evident in these responses to the question “Has being a BL fan affected your outlook towards homosexuality?”: “Swati” (twenty-three, Bangalore) replied, “Apart from learning more about the LGBT community in general, I have become more sensitive to the problems they face in communities where their kind of sexuality is not accepted. There are of course critiques of BL (targeted towards heterosexual girls/failing to tackle the real issues and so on) which I’m sure aren’t baseless. It certainly helps in opening up minds and hearts.”16 “Aruna” (twenty-eight, lecturer, New Delhi) told me that “BL manga had always led me to believe that who a person chooses to love or engage in a connection with is nobody’s business, ever since I was a teenager. Hence, a person being gay has never been a problem for me. The mangas sometimes might be a tad too utopian. But hey, who cares?”17 The responses of fans who have been engaging with BL for a longer period of time, or in Aruna’s case, her position as an academic, suggest that, while BL might have introduced many of them to queer themes, older readers have been able to identify the problems with BL as a genre as being intrinsically damaging to gay representation, while simultaneously finding it an important tool toward positive representation in a country where there is so little of it. This idea is further explored in the following responses: It opened my eyes to homosexuality! Before that, ‘gay’ was just a slang word that kids threw around, I had no concept of its

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meaning. But after reading BL manga, and investing myself in so many characters, Homosexuality became just as normal as heterosexuality. I didn’t understand why people would be so aghast about 2 boys/girls in love, only to realise that I had stories to make me understand that this was normal, so I’m really grateful to manga for that! But there is a downside to everything XD [emoticon indicating laughter] and for me, it was the stereotyping, I’d always assume that one of the people in a couple would always be the ‘man’ in the relationship and the other the ‘woman’, regardless of the gender and that’s because most manga portrayed them that way. Only recently did i begin to realise that, that was heterosexualising homosexuality, which was wrong . . . so very wrong!18 (“V-chan,” thirty-one, Bangalore) “Taslima” (twenty, Kolkata) observed, “It sometimes saddens me that gay people are so blatantly sexually objectified in manga but I know people have become much more sympathetic towards non-gender conforming people since art took up stories with gay characters in it, be it in manga, anime, books or fics.”19 Taslima, a student, further told me that as a member of the queer community, she does experience a degree of discomfort at the objectification of gay men in BL. Her concerns are echoed in Japan, a phenomenon Ishida Hitoshi calls “representational appropriation.” Ishida argues that, ultimately, despite the fictitious nature of BL works, it is difficult to completely separate the queerness within the texts from real members of the queer community.20 In India, while BL is their first point of exposure to media with queer themes, it is through an engagement with both BL and, subsequently, with the real issues of the queer community that readers have been able to develop an understanding of the fact that the representations in BL manga tend to be stereotypical or idealized.

It is unsurprising that locally produced BL content is largely nonexistent in India, especially in print. Among the respondents to my study was thirty-one-year-old V-chan, an artist based in Bangalore who produces manga-style fan and original art. V-chan was reluctant to display her BL fan art at events such as comic conventions, and just as reluctant to display original BL works on her pages on online platforms. She shares her art—usually fan works based on the aforementioned Tōya and Yukito



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from Cardcaptor Sakura, as well as some original art based on characters created by friends—only with those among her acquaintances who are already fans of BL. When I discovered BL, it was a very niche area within an already small fangroup of anime/manga fans, and I knew I loved it, but never wanted to force others into it. BL is more common with manga fans these days, but that mindset of it being my little secret pleasure still stays with me, and so I never ended up sharing my work. Another reason is of course is fear. My husband and the older generations in both sides of my family are not as open to homosexuality, and artworks depicting any such scene can cause a huge scene in large families. . . . Lastly, another reason I don’t sell such art is because its [sic] not financially as viable as other works. The fanbase to such works might have grown with the younger crowd, but to put up such posters at home with parents with an older mindset might not happen, which means they might not sell as much.21 The fear of censure from a largely oppressive society has also affected other artists and remains the primary reason why Indian artists of BL content prefer the anonymity of the Internet to share their work. A notable exception is Parvati Menon, who, in addition to actively producing fan art under the pseudonym “winged-peach,” has drawn a short Indian English-language BL manga, titled The Way Home (fig. 16.1), which she posted publicly on her personal Facebook page, that highlights some of the major challenges facing Indian society.22 The couple in the story are a Hindu and a Muslim, making the pairing doubly taboo. The artist’s intention is to try and raise awareness of queer issues by using a text that can be accessed by people who are not already familiar with Japanese manga texts. While the comic is only available online at present, Menon intends to channel a queer rights organization to spread its distribution further. The fact that Indian BL fans are attempting to politicize themselves, and approaching BL politically, provides an interesting point to conclude on. Many of those who made their forays into understanding queerness through an exposure to BL have since become active in campaigning for queer rights in the country through various avenues, including but not limited to participation in pride marches and

Figure 16.1. Parvati Menon, The Way Home, digital art (web comic), hosted on Facebook at facebook.com/parvati.menon.3, 2017. (Courtesy of Parvati Menon)



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membership in support groups as either allies or members of the LGBT community themselves. This politicization of BL is not unique to India, but, as suggested by other chapters in this volume, including by Peiti Wang, it sets Indian BL fans on a continuum with other parts of Asia, in the way that fans have found in it an avenue leading toward an understanding of aspects of sexuality otherwise not easily available to them. While thus far, the BL fandom (like the LGBT movement in India) is mostly centered in urban spaces, there is scope for growth through wider accessibility to online spaces. As Internet and mobile connectivity grows, it is not too hard to imagine the spread of BL fandom into semiurban and rural areas of India allowing for greater numbers of fans to become aware of issues concerning sexuality and the LGBT community. In sum, India’s BL fandom offers several avenues for further exploration, both within itself and in relation with BL across Asia. While Indian BL fans do have much in common with those from other parts of the world, including East and Southeast Asia, the rhetorical space that they occupy is a unique one due to the nature of Indian society. As a young fandom with room to expand, it presents itself as not only a space for new discourses on sexuality and gender roles but also one where a distinctly Indian idea of BL can develop.

Notes  1.  Tarush Bhalla, “Male Users Still Dominate Internet in India: IAMAI Report,” YourStory, February 20, 2018, https://yourstory.com/2018/02 /men-still-dominate-internet-in-india/. 2. Surabhi Agarwal, “Internet Users in India Expected to Reach 500 Million by June: IAMAI,” Economic Times, February 20, 2018, https:// economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india -expected-to-reach-500-million-by-june-iamai/articleshow/63000198.cms. 3. Kavyta Kay, New Indian Nuttahs: Comedy and Cultural Critique in Millennial India (Cham, Switz.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 55. 4.  Henrike Donner, “Doing It Our Way: Love and Marriage in Kolkata Middle-Class Families,” Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 4 (2016): 1172; Jyoti Puri, Woman, Body, Desire in Post-Colonial India: Narratives of Gender and Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 1999), x–xi. 5. Ketaki Chowkdhani, “Pleasure, Bodies, and Risk: Women’s Viewership of Pornography in Urban India,” Porn Studies 3, no. 4 (2016): 4.

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6.  Sanjay Srivastava, “Introduction,” in his Sexuality Studies (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013): 20. 7. Radhika Parameswaran, “Feminist Media Ethnography in India: Exploring Power, Gender, and Culture in the Field,” Qualitative Inquiry 7, no. 1 (2001): 83. 8. Alok Gupta, “Englishpur ki Kothi: Class Dynamics in the Queer Movement in India,” in Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India, ed. Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2005), 129. 9.  Sarita (student), interview, April 2017. 10.  Hema (student), interview, April 2017. 11.  Kazumi Nagaike, “Perverse Sexualities, Perverse Desires: Representations of Female Fantasies and Yaoi Manga as Pornography Directed at Women,” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal 25 (December 2003): 99. 12.  Chowkdhani, “Pleasure, Bodies, and Risk,” 8. 13.  Zehra (IT professional), interview, December 2017. 14.  Anu (student), interview, May 2018. 15.  Kazumi Nagaike, “Perverse Sexualities, Perverse Desires,” 84. 16.  Swati (student), interview, April 2017. 17.  Aruna (academic, lecturer), interview, December 2016. 18.  V-chan, email message to author, February 10, 2017. 19.  Taslima (student), email message to author, April 12, 2017. 20.  Ishida Hitoshi, “Representational Appropriation and the Autonomy of Desire in Yaoi/BL,” trans. Katsuhiko Suganuma, in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 218–219. 21.  V-chan, email message to author, April 12, 2017. 22.  Parvati Menon, “The Way Home,” Facebook, June 18, 2017, https:// www.facebook.com/parvati.menon.3/posts/10207282876269253.

Part I V

Border Crossing

chapter 17

Glocalization of Boys Love Dōjinshi in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia Kristine Michelle Santos

The transnational flows of Japanese popular media in Southeast Asia and neighboring Australia are evident through the various fan events in the region. Events such as Anime Festival Asia (AFA) and Sydney Anime and Manga Show (SMASH) underscore transformations in youth culture as young people in this region embrace and adapt Japanese fan literacies—from cosplay (costume play) to selling selfproduced works such as fan illustrations, accessories, and comics. In recent years, artists in the region have been producing self-produced magazines inspired by Japanese fanzines called dōjinshi. Referred to as zines in Australia and sometimes doujinshi or doujins in Southeast Asia, they are produced by young artists in the region who are actively using the medium to express their affective responses to popular Japanese media. Some of these affective works feature boys love (henceforth referred to as BL) narratives, where artists imagine romantic and sometimes erotic fantasies between two men. The production of these male–male romances—more popularly known in the region as yaoi, an older Japanese label for BL works—by fans in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia highlights the transcultural flows of Japanese popular culture and the challenges artists face when these homoerotic narratives transcend and transgress norms in these countries. This chapter problematizes what some fans and scholars perceive as the homogeneity of transcultural fan literacies by examining the experiences of some of the early Asian BL artists in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia as they have produced yaoi doujinshi or yaoi zines in their countries. Using approaches from New Literacy Studies, I examine 227

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how Scott WuMing (Philippines), PenguinFrontier (Malaysia), and Pirotess (Australia) have embraced, transformed, and adapted these BL literacies from Japan as local structures disrupt the transcultural flows of BL. This chapter outlines artists’ creative responses to these local challenges, highlighting their nuanced literacies and practices that deviate from how BL is known in Japan. The chapter thus sheds light on the glocalization of BL fan works in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia.

Literacies in BL Media and Dōjinshi Culture Early studies on BL media have examined their literary elements and their cultural impact in Japan.1 As Japanese popular culture becomes increasingly accessible all over the globe, scholars have also analyzed the transcultural flows of Japanese contents, specifically BL media.2 These researchers highlight the flows of BL culture around the world while also hinting at the BL literacies embraced by global BL fans. When I refer to literacies, I use a definition in New Literacy Studies where literacies are seen as “socially recognised ways in which people generate, communicate, and negotiate meanings as members of Discourses through the medium of encoded texts.”3 Discourse, with a capital D, refers to “ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing, that are accepted as instantiations of particular identities.”4 According to these definitions, literacies encompass cultural competencies and literacy practices encoded in various media that are associated with specific social identities or communities of practice. Within the context of BL literacies, I refer to fans’ competencies and literacy practices tied to BL culture—the ways in which they communicate and negotiate BL culture through different media. Analysis of BL literacies allows us to understand how fans inform others about BL culture, how their literacies shape their identities, and how different media can be pedagogical tools for BL literacies. BL fans must be cognizant of the various literacies and practices in BL culture in order to engage and identify with other BL fans. BL media, most of which are commercial or fan-produced comics and novels, contain BL literacies. Beyond basic technical literacies involving reading and writing, multimodal literacies in BL works shape fans’ engagement with various narrative and visual elements. BL manga



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in Japan are notable for using visual and narrative literacies and practices from both shōjo (girls’) and shōnen (boys’) comics. BL readers must be competent in literacies from these genres in order to navigate the intertextual literacies embedded in BL media. For example, in order to see the transformative potential of the bishōnen (beautiful boy), a male protagonist in BL stories, BL readers must understand how masculinity is depicted in shōjo and shōnen manga. Central to BL media is what Tomoko Aoyama defines as BL literacy (in the singular)—namely, “the ability to read and write/draw homoerotic narratives according to . . . the specific conventions of this genre.”5 The most important convention in the genre is its ōdō (“noble road,” a metaphor for a grand narrative pattern), which stipulates the romantic relationship between the seme, the man who gives affection, and the uke, the man who receives the seme’s affection.6 This ōdō is formulated as “seme x uke” where “x” serves as an operand that establishes this “coupling” (kappuringu).7 While Aoyoma views BL literacy as a singular competency, in my use of the plural I expand her definition by highlighting the multiple competencies and literacy practices in BL. Creating and conveying BL involve technical, textual, and visual literacies that contribute to a database of various narrative tropes (neta), character (kyara) elements, relationship dynamics (kankeisei), and moe (affect-evoking)8 elements in Japanese media. BL’s database is intertextual and relies on readers’ cultural capital. BL literacy practices such as fujoshime (fujoshi lenses)9 and moebanashi (moe talk)10 rely on fans’ intertextual and transformative fantasies (mōsō) surrounding BL’s ōdō.11 Fans who wish to engage in BL encounter these literacies embedded in BL media through its paratexts and scenarios that feature BL’s ōdō. As readers consume these narratives, their visceral response to these stories helps them remember various BL literacies. This visceral response is called “affect,” referred to in the fandom as moe. Affect is an intensity felt beyond logic, consciousness, and even our emotions.12 Affect plays a strong role in transforming BL media into a pedagogical medium. BL media becomes a medium for “affective hermeneutics,” which Anna Wilson describes as “a set way of gaining knowledge through feelings.”13 Through an artist’s use of affective BL literacies in their works, readers remember these visceral encounters and learn these literacies. As distribution of BL media becomes global, readers outside of Japan develop their literacies for BL culture.

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BL in a Transcultural Space Some scholars contend that since affect is an instinctual response, national cultures do not delimit affective attachments. As Bertha Chin and Lori Morimoto argue, “Nation-based differences or similarities may well appeal to people across borders; but so, too, might affective investments in characters, stories, and even fan subjectivities that exceed any national orientation.”14 The growing accessibility of Japanese media, such as BL, gives readers various opportunities to empathize with various characters and narratives and build affective investments. As such, “fans become fans not (necessarily) because of any cultural or national differences or similarities, but because of a moment of affinity between the fan and transcultural object.”15 It is in this context that the three artists I feature here have found themselves immersed in BL culture. These three Asian artists from three different countries highlight the transnational flows of BL into, out of, and around Southeast Asia and among diasporic Asian communities in Australia. Scott WuMing and PenguinFrontier, BL/yaoi/gay web comic and doujinshi artists from the Philippines and Malaysia, respectively, chanced upon BL through fan works about popular anime and through fan-translated BL comics online. Pirotess, an Australian of mixed Asian ethnicities and a yaoi zine artist, stumbled upon BL through yaoi dōjinshi involving her favorite video game characters. Despite living in three different countries and communities, these three artists were all moved and empowered by Japanese BL texts. Their affective encounters with BL works sparked their curiosity about the genre and initiated their quest to learn its literacies. This led them to engage with the genre by reading more BL works and communicating on online BL communities on the websites LiveJournal and DeviantArt, both major forums for BL media. These communities served as affinity spaces where BL fans were bound “primarily to a set of common endeavors or practices and secondarily to other people in terms of shared culture or traits.”16 Through their engagement with various BL media and spaces, these artists were eventually inspired to create their own BL works. The works of these three artists highlight their education in BL literacies. Pirotess, an active yaoi zine creator since 2000, takes pride in her “fujoshi” identity: her zine Noble Rot (fig. 17.1) bears the subtitle “Carefully Fermented Fujoshi Culture.”17 Both the subtitle and main title play with



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Figure 17.1. Cover of Pirotess’ Noble Rot, vol. 3 (Sydney: Self-published, 2013). (Courtesy of Pirotess)

the meaning of “fujoshi,” which means “rotten girls/women,” as it associates fujoshi’s “rotten” literary practices with fermentation processes. The back cover features the zine’s manifesto, wherein Pirotess explains to readers the meaning of the magazine’s name, which cleverly combines

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the English meaning of fujoshi with “noble rot,” a specific fungus used in wine making. This intertextual connection continues throughout the zine as Pirotess and other contributors to her zine draw upon fujoshi culture to explore homoeroticism and male–male romance. Pirotess’s contributions to the zine further exemplify the magazine’s intertextual literacies as she parodies her favorite couplings from the video game Tekken (1994–) and the light novel series Yukikaze (Sentō yōsei yukikaze, 1979–). Intertextuality is also seen in the contributors’ profiles,18 which showcase faces from Yamakawa Jun’ichi’s Kuso miso tekunikku (Crappy miso technique, 1987), a Japanese gay comic popularized on online forums which has been associated with fujoshi culture. Scott WuMing, who has been active as a yaoi web comic and doujinshi artist since 2009, also establishes ties with Japan’s fujoshi culture. His website, Cinnamonrub.me, has a warning that informs readers that he is a BL manga geek and tags his works as “yaoi” or “boys love.”19 WuMing also uploads his work on pixiv, an online Japanese artist community, where he uses similar labels to describe his works. With the exception of language, the structure of WuMing’s work is heavily influenced by techniques in manga. His comic reads from right to left and uses various manga elements, such as abstract spatial panels, screen tones as textures, and speech bubbles that distinguish internal monologue. In WuMing’s debut work (Not Yours, Am I?), his early character designs bear similarities to protagonists in BL comics—slim masculine frames and highly expressive eyes and faces.20 His later works feature characters with defined muscles similar to the aesthetics of BL artist Naono Bohra. WuMing also uses various narrative tropes extensively used in Japanese BL works. In Face the Consequences (fig. 17.2), he uses a school setting to establish the teacher–student dynamic for his main couple. WuMing illustrates the teacher’s erotic fantasies as he imagines various sexual exploits with his student. The artist depicts various romantic plots used in BL works such as relationships between brothers, between parents and children, and between coworkers. His ability to integrate these plots under the guise of a character’s fantasy highlights his high proficiency in BL literacies. PenguinFrontier’s BL works also showcase his familiarity with various BL literacies. His comics Smile and Faker’s Affair (fig. 17.3) use a popular Japanese BL scenario that explores the romance between classmates. Faker’s Affair is notable for its twist on the seme x uke



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Figure 17.2. Cover of Scott WuMing’s Face the Consequences (Manila: Selfpublished 2014). (Courtesy of Scott WuMing)

formula, as he reverses the roles of his coupling toward the end of the series. PenguinFrontier also engages in this transcultural exchange by selling digital Japanese-language versions of his comics, primarily erotic works, on the commercial Japanese dōjin website DLsite. These artists highlight the transcultural flows of BL around the region. Through their engagement with various BL works from Japan, they learned BL literacies through affective hermeneutics. These artists

Figure 17.3. Cover of PenguinFrontier’s Faker’s Affair, vol. 1 (Kuala Lumpur: Selfpublished, 2014). (Courtesy of PenguinFrontier)



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reuse, repurpose, and transform their favorite aspects of BL manga to create their own narratives. While this showcases the transcultural potential of BL, these works also bear striking differences from the original due to local structures that influence their content.

Structures of Control in Fan Spaces in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia Borrowing from Michel de Certeau, Henry Jenkins has famously described fans as “textual poachers” who poach various texts and meanings in media in hopes of satisfying their own desires.21 In describing fans as poachers, Jenkins implies that fans are at the mercy of “landlords.” In his discussion of de Certeau, John Fiske describes landlords as “provid[ing] the building within which we dwell” while “the culture industry [provides] the texts we ‘consume’ as we relax in it.”22 De Certeau specifically argues that people use various “tactics” to survive the demanding “strategies” set by “landlords”—“strategies” that can be as concrete as a building complex or as abstract as social norms. These “strategies” are structures in society that are considered “proper” by people in power, while “tactics” are the “improper” ways people respond to these structures.23 As Jenkins notes, for de Certeau, “strategies” are used by those in positions of strength, while “tactics” are employed by powerless nomads, like fans, who use various tactics to navigate textual landscapes.24 This freedom becomes limited when fans move in physical landscapes such as fan event spaces where various landlords demand that its occupants be “proper”—a topic taken up in this volume in chapters by Kania Arini Sukotjo and Aerin Lai. These landlords encompass the managers of the venue, the sponsors of the event, the local government and community, and the event organizers. Taking into consideration the dynamics between landlords and poachers, BL fans participating at fan events are at the mercy of an event’s landlords who have the power to deploy strategies that govern and dictate the movements of the event’s participants. In these fan events, fans are subject to the strategies set by their landlords, which encompass the layout of the event, rules of tenancy, and the conduct of its occupants. These strategies are gatekeeping mechanisms that landlords use to c­ ontrol fan activities and regulate the kinds of goods fans produce.25 The BL works of Pirotess, Scott WuMing, and PenguinFrontier reflect their consent to the strategies these event landlords enforce. In

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the process, the transcultural nature of their BL works becomes increasingly local—like the events at which they participate.

Glocalization of BL Dōjinshi Victor Roudometof argues that glocalization is where “the global and the local shape the end state.”26 In recent years, the power of BL culture has led to the development of localized BL media in Asia with the commercialization of Chinese BL novels called danmei and Thai BL.27 The works of Pirotess, Scott WuMing, and PenguinFrontier are also reflections of BL glocalization as they adapt BL literacies they have learned as they navigate spaces that regulate their BL expression. In terms of content and accessibility, the works of these three artists are remarkably different compared to BL works in Japan and are increasingly local. Of the three artists, Philippines-based artist Scott WuMing faces the least gatekeeping at local fan events. He participates in various fan events and is a participant at Komikon, the largest local comics-related gathering in Manila. Established in 2005, Komikon has guidelines that allow erotic content provided that works do not contain child pornography.28 This has opened opportunities for local artists with risqué content to distribute their works.29 As such, WuMing liberally advertises his comics as “yaoi,” which has captured the attention of local BL fans. Unlike nearly all BL works in Japan, WuMing’s works are uncensored as he deliberately draws his characters’ penises in sexual scenes. This decision is primarily driven by his own interests and the affective impact it has on his readers who are not attuned to seeing uncensored images in BL.30 WuMing plays on Filipino BL readers’ exposure to sexual content or lack of exposure to that content,31 in producing works that elicit affective responses. Depictions of sexual fantasies in Face the Consequences highlight WuMing’s intent to shock his readers with graphic sexual images.32 He admits finding amusement in his readers’ responses, driving him to produce more yaoi comics.33 WuMing’s liberties as a yaoi artist ride on the inconsistent gatekeeping mechanisms in the Philippines. While there are Philippine laws on obscenity, enforcement of these laws focuses on public art and mass media.34 The efforts to ban Japanese pornographic animation, known locally as “hentai,” a Japanese term for perversion, have led to the ban of pornographic websites as part of the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009;35 however, this has not been enforced in offline spaces.



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Organizers of fan events such as Komikon have also been inconsistent in controlling erotic content at their events. Some homoerotic works have been pulled from tables, while pornographic comics depicting heteronormative sexual scenes have not been regulated by Komikon’s organizers.36 WuMing navigates selling safe fan works in large conventions and selling his uncensored R18 BL works only at BL events such as BLush Convention. Pirotess has also witnessed inconsistent gatekeeping at various fan events in Australia. Australian laws on censorship, obscenity, and child pornography greatly influence local fan culture, as these laws potentially criminalize fans who create and consume fan works.37 As such, various fan events structure their event guidelines based on these laws.38 Their gatekeeping measures are also guided by the goal of protecting their young attendees from explicit content. Fan works with explicit content must be out of reach of minors, sealed, labelled, and packaged based on Australia’s censorship guidelines. The enforcement of these guidelines, however, has been inconsistent, with some works being wrongfully pulled from artists’ tables.39 Pirotess has taken measures when preparing her yaoi zines. She ensures that all her works are properly packaged and sealed, accessible only to adults, and do not depict minors in sexual situations.40 After Paul Yore’s controversial art installation where he was charged for child pornography after using erotic images of young celebrities such as Justin Bieber,41 most Australian yaoi zine artists refrain from depicting the celebration of youthful eroticism common in Japanese BL. Due to the potentially explicit content of yaoi zines, Australian BL works are also highly inaccessible except in specialized fan events such as Sinpozium and Room801 that cater to fans of yaoi and slash, another iteration of male–male romance popular in Western fandoms and, to a lesser extent, in Asia, discussed in this volume by Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang. PenguinFrontier is also concerned with distribution, especially given the strongly homophobic sentiments that are pervasive in Malaysia, to say nothing of legal prohibitions.42 Sodomy is a criminal offence, and depictions of—even implications of—homosexual acts are heavily censored.43 Fan spaces such as Comic Fiesta, Malaysia’s largest comic fan event, have strict guidelines that restrict works containing yaoi and yuri (female–female intimacy) themes, as well as comics featuring pornographic content. Despite these rules, PenguinFrontier continues to

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participate at local events and exercises great caution by distributing portraits of his favorite characters and BL illustration books he considers “safe.”44 While these BL illustrations, including the illustration on the cover of this volume, can be interpreted as homosocial by the general public, they can be read as implicitly yaoi by local BL fans. PenguinFrontier has tried to publish his BL comics in print but at least as of 2018 no local publisher has been willing to publish his work. He distributes his comics digitally through online platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Local homophobia pushed PenguinFrontier to set his BL stories outside of Malaysia. Both Smile and Faker’s Affair have Japanese protagonists, a deliberate creative decision by PenguinFrontier, who wants to avoid any local retribution. By disassociating his works from Malaysia, his characters occupy a fantastic space that is closer to an imagined Japan or Asia. His colorful semi-realistic aesthetic—which reflects influences from both Japanese BL manga and manhua (Chinese comics, widely available in Malaysia)—further highlights his tactics in evading local strategies that impinge upon his creative freedom. The works of Scott WuMing, Pirotess, and PenguinFrontier reflect a glocalization that occurs when various local “strategies” restrict the expression of transcultural BL literacies. The fan works of these Asian artists represent local “tactics” that circumvent strategies present in Asia and Australia that impede their freedom of expression. In the process, they have adapted and transformed various BL literacies and practices from fujoshi Discourse. As early BL creators in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Australia, they also serve as models for younger BL artists who are inspired to use similar tactics to create increasingly local BL works. Their glocalized BL works reflect negotiated transcultural literacies and practices that are transforming modes of expression and consumption among Southeast Asian youths.

Notes  1.  On literature, see Tomoko Aoyama, “Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers,” in Modernization and Beyond: The Japanese Trajectory, ed. Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Subverting Masculinity, Misogyny, and Reproductive Technology in Sex Pistols,” Image



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& Narrative 12, no. 1 (2011). On media, see Sugiura Yumiko, Fujoshika suru sekai: Higashi Ikebukuro otaku joshitachi (Japan: Chūokōron Shinsha, 2006); Björn-Ole Kamm, “Rotten Use Patterns: What Entertainment Theories Can Do for the Study of Boys’ Love,” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 12 (2013), http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article /view/427; and Mari Nishimura, BL karuchāron: Bōizu rabu ga kawaru hon (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2015). 2. Dru Pagliassotti, “GloBLisation and Hybridisation: Publishers’ Strategies for Bringing Boys’ Love to the United States,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 20 (April 2009), http:// intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/pagliassotti.htm; Liu Ting, “Conflicting Discourses on Boys Love and Subcultural Tactics in Mainland China and Hong Kong,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, no. 20 (April 2009), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/liu.htm; Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliassotti, Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre (McFarland, 2010); Tricia Abigail Fermin, “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines: Conflict, Resistance and Imaginations through and beyond Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 13, no. 3 (May 12, 2013), http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3/fermin.html. 3.  Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning, 3rd ed. (Berkshire, UK: Open University Press, 2011), 33. 4.  James Paul Gee, Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), 3. 5.  Tomoko Aoyama, “BL (Boys’ Love) Literacy: Subversion, Resuscitation, and Transformation of the (Father’s) Text,” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal 43 (2012): 66. 6. Nishimura, BL karuchāron, 127–128; Kaneda Junko and Miura Shion, “‘Seme X uke’ no mekuru meku sekai: Dansei shintai no miryoku o motomete,” Yurīka 39, no. 7 (2007). 7. Patrick W. Galbraith, “Moe and the Potential of Fantasy in PostMillennial Japan,” Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, October 31, 2009, http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html. 8. On moe see Patrick W. Galbraith, The Moe Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2014), 5. 9. Uli Meyer, “Hidden in Straight Sight: Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL,” in Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre, ed. Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, and Dru Pagliassotti (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010).

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10. Patrick W. Galbraith, “Moe Talk: Affective Communication among Female Fans of Yaoi in Japan,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 11.  Akiko Mizoguchi, “Theorizing Comics/Manga Genre as a Productive Forum: Yaoi and Beyond,” in Global Manga Studies, ed. Jaqueline Berndt, vol. 1, Comics Worlds and the World of Comics: Towards Scholarship on a Global Scale (Kyoto: International Manga Research Center, 2010), 150–155. 12. Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 15–37. 13. Anna Wilson, “The Role of Affect in Fan Fiction,” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21 (2016), http://journal.transformativeworks.org /index.php/twc/article/view/684. 14.  Bertha Chin and Lori Hitchcock Morimoto, “Towards a Theory of Transcultural Fandom,” Participations 10, no. 1 (May 2013): 99. 15.  Chin and Morimoto, “Towards a Theory,” 104–105. 16. James Paul Gee, “Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education,” Review of Research in Education 25 (2000): 105. 17. Pirotess, Noble Rot, vol. 3 (Sydney: Self-published, 2013). 18. Pirotess, Noble Rot, vol. 3, 24–25. 19. Scott WuMing, “Art Projects,” Cinnamonrub.me, accessed March 22, 2017, http://cinnamonrub.me/projects. 20.  Scott WuMing, Not Yours Am I? vol. 1 (Self-published, 2009). 21. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 23–25. 22.  John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture, 2nd ed. (London; New York: Routledge, 2010), 33. 23.  Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xix. 24. Jenkins, Textual Poachers, 36–37, 45. 25.  Karine Barzilai-Nahon, “Toward a Theory of Network Gatekeeping: A Framework for Exploring Information Control,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 59, no. 9 (July 2008): 1496. 26.  Victor Roudometof, “Theorizing Glocalization,” European Journal of Social Theory 19, no. 3 (September 9, 2015): 399. 27.  Thomas Baudinette, “Lovesick, The Series: Adapting Japanese ‘Boys Love’ to Thailand and the Creation of a New Genre of Queer Media,” South East Asia Research 27, no. 2 (2019); Eve Ng and Xiaomeng Li, “A Queer ‘Socialist Brotherhood’: The Guardian Web Series, Boys’ Love Fandom,



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and the Chinese State,” Feminist Media Studies 20, no. 4 (2020). See also the chapters on greater China and Thailand in this volume. 28.  Komikon Staff, “Komikon Indieket 2015 Registration,” Komikon (blog), April 16, 2015, http://www.komikon.org/komikon-indieket-2015-registration/. 29.  An example of this is Kubori Kikiam, an erotic comedy comic strip that also exemplifies the transnational impact of Japanese culture in the Philippines. See Michael David, Kubori Kikiam: Strips for the Soul Omnibus (Quezon City: Flipside Publishing, 2013); and Kristine Michelle Santos, “Book Review—Kubori Kikiam: Strips for the Soul Omnibus,” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, September 2014, http://kyotoreview.org/reviews/book -review-kubori-kikiam-strips-for-the-soul-omnibus/. 30.  Scott WuMing, interview with author, July 12, 2016. 31.  Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin, “Uncovering Hidden Transcripts of Resistance of Yaoi and Boys Love Fans in Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines: Critiquing Gender and Sexual Orders within Global Flows of Japanese Popular Culture” (Ph.D. diss., Osaka University, 2013), 120–121. 32. Scott WuMing, “Face the Consequences,” in Blush: Secrets and Confessions, ed. Blush Anthology Editorial Team, vol. 2 (Blush Convention, 2014). 33.  WuMing, interview. 34.  Fermin, “Uncovering Hidden Transcripts of Resistance,” 123–125. 35. See “Bill vs ‘Hentai’ Close to Becoming Law in RP,” GMA News Online, April 12, 2009, http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/156666 /lifestyle/bill-vs-hentai-close-to-becoming-law-in-rp; Jovic Yee, “PH Gov’t Blocks Popular Porn Sites,” Inquirer.net, January 14, 2017, https://techno logy.inquirer.net/57789/ph-govt-blocks-popular-porn-sites; and “R.A. 9775: Anti-Child Pornography Act,” the LAWPHIL Project, accessed May 15, 2017, http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2009/ra_9775_2009.html. 36.  I base these assertions on my observations of Komikon events since 2012 and discourse among participants since that time. 37. Mark McLelland, “Australia’s ‘Child-Abuse Material’ Legislation, Internet Regulation, and the Juridification of the Imagination,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 15, no. 5 (September 1, 2012). 38.  “SMASH! 2015 Artist and Clubs Manual” (SMASH! Sydney Manga and Anime Show, July 2015); “Supanova Pop Culture Expo 2015 Exhibitor Information” (Supanova Pop Culture Expo, January 2015). 39.  Bhakti Puvanenthiran, “Comic Sex Depiction Removed from Supanova Convention,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 16, 2014, http://www.smh.com .au/entertainment/art-and-design/comic-sex-depiction-removed-from

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-supanova-convention-20140416–36qvz.html; Scarlette Baccini, “My Comic ‘Jesus Reloadeth’d’ Was Banned from Supanova,” Facebook, April 13, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/scarlette.baccini/posts/10152817476911677, and “Reasons behind the Banning of Jesus Reloadeth’d,” Facebook, April 13, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/scarlette.baccini/posts/10152817476911677 ?comment_id=30862652&offset=50&total_comments=98&comment_tracking =%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D. 40.  Pirotess, interview with author, October 4, 2014. 41.  ABC Arts, “Pornography Charges against Paul Yore Dismissed,” ABC News, May 29, 2013, http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/arts-desk/Artist -Paul-Yore-acquitted-of-pornography-charges-141001/default.htm. 42. Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, “Negotiating Religious and Fan Identities: ‘Boys’ Love’ and ‘Fujoshi Guilt’,” in The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Mark McLelland (London: Routledge, 2016), 190. 43.  An example of this is the recent censorship of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (dir., Bill Condon, Walt Disney Pictures, 2017) where the Malaysian Film Censorship Board demanded gay scenes be cut from the film. After public backlash, the film was released uncut. 44.  PenguinFrontier, interview with author, December 12, 2016.

chapter 18

On the Psychology, Physicality, and Communication Strategies of Male Fans of BL in East Asia A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Men’s Desires to “Become” Fudanshi Kazumi Nagaike

Previous critical transnational analyses of boys love (BL) have primarily explored this popular genre of male homosexual fantasies in relation to the presumed heterosexual orientation and desires of female readers. However, issues surrounding the identification of male BL fans with the term fudanshi (rotten boys/men) merit further critical examination. Inspired by Yoshimoto Taimatsu’s groundbreaking research on Japanese fudanshi, I have previously explored how and why Japanese men become involved in this (seemingly) female-dominated popular genre.1 This chapter attempts to unveil both the psychosexual orientation of self-identified heterosexual fudanshi and their physicality in relation to their consumption of BL narratives. I have been carrying out ethnographic research, including semistructured online and in-person interviews, in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in order to demonstrate how male desires to consume BL present idiosyncratic and/or regional differences within specific social/cultural/political contexts. In this regard, the reliability of such hypotheses as that (self-identified heterosexual) fudanshi feel tempted to subvert or negate the construction of a strong, masculine ego will be examined. An analysis of the reading practices of fudanshi in these regions may also contribute to a critical discussion concerning ways in which aspects of a sort of queer masculinity, such as conscious and subconscious desires for “self-feminization,” can

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be accommodated within a Japan-oriented epistemology of shota, the name of a genre depicting love of, psychological attachment to, or sexual desire for young boys who are usually prepubescent or barely adolescent as well as a label for the young male characters appearing in such works. In this way, I will consider the process of “self-feminization” as it plays out within the BL activities of inter-Asian heterosexual fudanshi as a means to subvert the socially conditioned narrative of hegemonic masculinity around the region.

Previous Research on Japanese Fudanshi In my previous research, I have shown the ways in which BL may subvert socially enforced gender paradigms among Japanese fudanshi. In the process of recognizing their own desire to participate in a previously femaledominated genre, they may be enabled by BL to take a postmodern perspective in relation to preexisting concepts of maleness and masculinity—that is, engage in self-feminization. In this way, individual fudanshi may also learn how to overcome their own dilemmas regarding socially conditioned masculine behavior by listening attentively to the voices of other fudanshi. In this regard, one of the fudanshi whom Yoshimoto interviewed stated, “I somehow feel myself freed from [established] gender consciousness [through reading BL]. I’m not at all skilled at expressing masculinity in a particularly appropriate way.”2 Other fudanshi Yoshimoto interviewed also expressed their understanding of BL as subversive: —BL was salvation for me. And I think that it can be the same for a lot of men [in Japan] today.3 —BL/yaoi was a tool that my generation (I was born in 1970) could use to liberate ourselves from the tough life of living as men.4 —And for men, competitive principles such as “men have to win” work [on them]. I felt so burdened by such ideas. I was really saved by [the magazine] June and yaoi, from which I got that perspective that “it’s okay for men to be passive (uke).”5 —I started getting the idea that men can enjoy specific texts, like yaoi, that were originally constructed by and for women, in order to live with less stress and psychological pressure.6 Yoshimoto’s research has also demonstrated that shota constitutes another significant feature of fudanshi discourse. As we can see in the



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following group of excerpts from interviews conducted by Yoshimoto with individuals he calls B and C, Japanese fudanshi often express their emotional attachment to shota without hesitation: B: Yes, I’m attracted to shota. I sense differences between boy–boy (shōnen–shōnen) eroticism and heterosexual relationships. Yoshimoto: So, did you feel, after all, that your favorite scenario involves boy–boy relationships? B: I’ve always been attracted to the close bond between boys. Sexual contact is possibly inserted into boy–boy narratives, in order to express this bond.7 Yoshimoto: Do you think that the shota element guided you to the world of BL? C: Yes, it did. I discovered that shota stories were included in manga books with rorikon [prepubescent girl] themes. Reading these shota stories got me interested in boy–boy relationships.8 As I have pointed out elsewhere, this desire of fudanshi to return to boyhood represents another facet of their self-feminization and also has certain similarities with Sigmund Freud’s theories that view male beating fantasies as manifestations of repressed homoeroticism/homosexuality.9 In this regard, according to Freudian theoretical analysis, male beating fantasies may be categorized in terms of three distinct stages: 1. “I am loved by my father”: This phase clearly indicates the boy’s feminine attitude toward his father. 2. “I am being beaten by my father”: This phase indicates the boy’s repressed (homosexual and incestuous) desires toward his father. 3. “I am being beaten by my mother”: Even though here the subject performing the beating has changed from father to mother, the beater still manifests masculine qualities. Thus, this third stage can also be discussed in terms of the boy’s (homosexual) desires toward his father, precisely because here the “mother” represents a disguised “father.”10 As Japanese psychoanalyst and critic of popular culture Saitō Tamaki argues, masculine desire for shota characters may definitely be viewed

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within a Freudian theoretical framework. According to Saitō, this desire represents a specific form of otaku sexuality that is “deliberately separated from everyday life.”11 Thus, shota narratives succeed to the extent that they take an absolute distance from realistic depictions. Saitō’s conception of shota demonstrates the degree to which shota narratives imaginatively manifest a realm of pure fictionality in which male readers may find an expression of their repressed desire to return to boyhood (and thus avoid becoming a “man”).12 As this brief discussion shows, BL enables fudanshi to sublimate the inherent psychological conflicts created by socially enforced masculine ideals through the identification of fudanshi with narratives and characters originally produced by and for women. These highly romantic narratives may even represent a form of salvation for fudanshi, since the BL genre provides a specific space where their desire for shota and related emotions may be freely expressed and where socially imposed masculine ideals may be systematically deconstructed.

A “Community of Collective Interpretation” for Feminized Fudanshi in Hong Kong Here I will introduce a case study of a Chinese heterosexual fudanshi in Hong Kong. In May 2017, I conducted an interview in English via email of a twenty-four-year-old university student whom I will call “Alvin.” Alvin lives in Hong Kong, confirms that his sexual orientation is heterosexual, and professes “no desire for male love in reality at all. Moreover, I am a Christian, [a] Protestant.” His first encounter with BL occurred when he was fourteen years old. As he discloses, his initial involvement with BL originated from his attraction to the BL “community”: “At that time, I was not keen on making friends, but a group of fujoshi made friends with me. Every day at school we made jokes about the other male classmates, categorizing them into seme [top/insertive] or uke [bottom/ receptive] and then making them into imaginary couples.”13 Kaneda Junko’s analysis of BL dōjinshi (fanzines), which relies on a community-based approach that she calls “collective interpretation” (kaishaku kyōdōtai), is especially worth considering in this context.14 The theoretical framework of Kaneda’s BL “collective interpretation” refers to an imagined arena which only the members of specific BL dōjinshi communities can access and in which their identities as community members are reinforced. Further analysis is required of Kaneda’s



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controversial assertion that male BL participants may be recognized as fujoshi—rather than fudanshi—precisely because they are psychologically attached to a “collective interpretation” of BL that has been constructed by and for women. In this regard, Kaneda’s theoretical position concerning fujoshi/fudanshi identity would view Alvin’s BL-fan identity as an empirical reality within a female-oriented BL community of “collective interpretation.” The female-oriented BL community in Hong Kong provides Alvin with a specific space in which he is allowed to immerse himself and thus engage in self-feminization. In a similar vein, the gay male BL writer and researcher Cocome, discussed by Peiti Wang in her chapter in this volume, himself identifies as a funü (fujoshi) rather than a funan (fudanshi), thus recognizing his membership in the Taiwanese fujoshi community. In my previous research, I have shown the ways in which BL may subvert socially enforced gender paradigms among Japanese fudanshi. In this regard, Travis Kong’s historiographic, ethnographic analysis of Chinese masculinity reveals a diversification of both standardized and queer masculinity within a broader geopolitical conception of “Chinese-ness” that includes mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese, and diasporic Chinese.15 Kong’s analysis shows how contemporary Hong Kong Chinese attitudes toward masculinity coincide with the ever-developing materialism and consumerism of capitalism in Hong Kong. Kong’s further research regarding client masculinities in the Hong Kong sex industry confirms the established typology of male clients who eagerly seek to follow romantic scripts in their relationships with female sex workers. While other male consumers act out hegemonic masculinity by “just fucking,” the typology of romantic male clients emphasizes the importance of emotional interactions with female sex workers, rather than “fast, cheap and easy service with efficient, predictable and calculable women’s bodies to consume,” which has been termed the “McDonaldization of Sex,” or “McSex.”16 In the context of the stereotypically masculine, commercialized, materialistic Hong Kong sex industry, male clients who wish to focus on a romantic script clearly demonstrate a subconscious desire to feminize hegemonic masculinity, just as selfidentified heterosexual fudanshi have demonstrated a similar desire in the Japanese sociocultural context. In modern societies, the consumption of sexual pleasure generally coincides with the establishment of hegemonic masculinity. In

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this context, I asked Alvin some questions regarding sexual physicality. Overall, he denies any relationship between his sexual arousal and his consumption of BL: When I read BL comics, I don’t experience physical arousal at all, no matter how explicit the scenes are. However, I do feel mentally excited when I see BL scenes or imagine how a seme character attracts a uke character. It is more like delight than sexual excitement. I may laugh or scream when I read the stories. . . . Reading BL stories also allows me to stay close to my friends. Even nowadays (after 9 years), we keep in contact and still make BL jokes about anime or other friends. I asked him further: “Regarding the sexually explicit scenes in BL, do you just ignore them? Do you experience feelings of disgust when reading the sexually explicit scenes in BL?” He answered: “I do not experience any special feelings about BL sex scenes because I understand male sexual physiology. I simply acknowledge the scenes (for example: ‘Oh, ok. That’s an erection,’ or ‘He ejaculated’), without trying to put myself into the scene. I don’t feel any disgust toward BL comics or 同人 [dōjin, fan] works. However, I do actively avoid watching live-action BL stuff [such as TV dramas and films].” Alvin, who obviously does read pornographic BL narratives, sounds as though he wishes to remove himself from the very essence of BL eroticism. In this regard, while both the romantically oriented male clients in the Hong Kong sex industry and heterosexual fudanshi can be seen as dropouts from Hong Kong’s hypermasculine, capitalist society, they also suggest how self-feminization can represent the antithesis of such hegemonic masculinity.17 Alvin’s answer to another question—“Why are you mentally excited when you read scenes in which a seme tries to attract an uke?”—parallels to some extent the aforementioned Japanese fudanshi’s desire to negate hegemonic masculinity: “I quite enjoy the dialogue as well as the body language or facial expressions of the two characters (in a BL couple) during their interactions, as portrayed in BL comics. In real life, it is rare to see men’s shy side, but in BL stories the shyness of a uke is usually emphasized. It is interesting to see how a seme character excites a uke character into playing a romantic role. It’s a feeling of love similar to that in a BL love story.”



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The Politics of Shota Shota constitutes another significant feature of Japanese fudanshi discourse. In September 2017, I conducted an interview via email with the aforementioned fudanshi studies scholar and self-described fundashi Yoshimoto Taimatsu. Yoshimoto confesses that the concept of shota represents one of the key elements in understanding his own sexuality and psychology as a fudanshi: “In my twenties, I never doubted that I was heterosexual. However, with the advent of the BL manga subgenre called shota mono [works featuring young boys], I vaguely realized that I could be sexually aroused by cute boys. Around 2006, BL works started depicting hard-core and realistic sex scenes, and this made me fully realize that BL works in general can arouse me sexually.” Returning to the case of Hong Kong, another question which I asked Alvin was, “What are your thoughts when you read that a Japanese heterosexual fudanshi does experience sexual arousal through reading BL, imagining himself as a BL uke character and replacing the seme’s face with that of a sexually dominating woman?”18 His answer to my question brought up the topic of shota: I would say that I understand this situation. My ex-girlfriend (the first and only one, at this point) is also a possessive person and has a strong character. During our relationship, I had often imagined her assuming the dominant role in our “future sex scenes,” and this idea excited me sexually. I think, in my future sexual life, my partner and I will always take turns at playing the dominant role in sex. That’s an important source of sexual pleasure. For me, I do not find that BL scenes have influenced my real-life sexual desires, but I can understand that someone might imagine himself as a uke in a BL scene and derive sexual delight or excitement from that. I also think this kind of sexual desire is complex. I remember reading a remark (some kind of joke) on the Internet, referring to 男の娘 [otoko no ko, cross-dressing pretty boys/young men who look just like girls/young women], that said you should make your partner (usually a ショタ [shota]) become a 男の娘 [otoko no ko] because that way you can take away his “male dignity” and give him the “shyness of women,” at the same time. I think this concept accords with our situation. Considering others’ Facebook comments on that remark, and even my own attitude,

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it seems to me that losing some part of a man’s dignity and adopting some part of a woman’s shyness can definitely provide sexual excitement. So, even though I have very little desire for that, yes the feeling does exist. This desire of fudanshi to return to boyhood represents another facet of their self-feminization and also possesses certain similarities with Sigmund Freud’s theories that view male beating-fantasies as manifestations of repressed homoeroticism/homosexuality. If male beating fantasies may be considered to represent a subconscious masculine desire to return to boyhood (self-feminization) and thus receive unconditional love from the Symbolic Father, then the longing for boyhood (or shota characters) among fudanshi may be considered in a similar way. In this sense, a fudanshi may imagine himself to be a boy who is subject to being “beaten” (i.e., loved) by the Father; his nostalgia for boyhood thus represents another aspect of his self-feminization.

South Korean Fudanshi’s Challenges to Hegemonic Masculinity Korean cultural critic Sun Jung explores how South Korean hegemonic masculinity is used as a means to systematize modern patriarchy as representing the essence of misogyny, violence, and “macho-ism.” Jung summarizes the dialectic of Korean hegemonic masculinity through three key concepts: Confucian patriarchy, masculine distance from daily reproductive labor, and mandatory military service: “As Confucian patriarchy . . . defines men as the principal income-earners of the family, [it] validate[s] men’s domestic authority and dominance. . . . The separation of men from the daily work of reproductive and caring labor is another element of hegemonic masculinity. . . . Many South Korean scholars have insisted on the sociopolitical connections between violent South Korean masculinity and militarism.”19 In December 2013, I was able to interview five South Korean selfidentified heterosexual fudanshi in Korean via email.20 These South Korean fudanshi commented on idealized masculinity in the South Korean context. Their comments echo to some extent Jung’s delineation of South Korean hegemonic masculinity. They describe idealized concepts of masculinity in South Korea in the following ways:



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—Tall, good at sports, very active, and gentle toward girls. Also physically protective toward women. (“Youngchul”) —Capable of hard labor, decisive, positive, good at sports. Regarding external appearance, men should possess strong bodies (i.e., be muscular). (“Hyunwoo”) —Men are not expected to express their feelings openly. For example, on Korean TV dramas, the male characters rarely cry or smile. I was shocked when a male friend of mine told me that he considered sentimentality to be his weak point. However, men are allowed to show their anger. In fact, showing anger is considered to be quite manly. (“Jungho”) —Positive about everything, good at promoting himself, strong, and responsible. A man must put his work first, rather than household matters. (“Hyunwoo”) —Idealized notions of masculinity are primarily based on one’s external appearance. Muscular and handsome men are usually believed to represent the South Korean masculine ideal. (“Taehyun”) While none of these men mention it directly, idealized masculinity assumes heterosexuality. The stigmatization of male homosexuality in South Korean society has been discussed by many scholars and other social critics. For instance, Kyung Hyun Kim, the author of The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, asserts that “the representation of homosexuality is still a very repressed subject in Korean cinema. Until 2002, there has been only one feature film that has openly engaged homosexuality by foregrounding gay characters at the center of narrative. . . . [Prior films] also feature gay characters but they are all villains, with questionable moral sensibilities.”21 One of my South Korean fudanshi interview subjects lamented South Koreans’ homophobia: “South Korea is surely super-conservative in terms of the acceptance of homosexuality, compared with other countries. I’m sad to say that South Koreans’ views of sexuality are quite narrow-minded.” The following comment made by a South Korean fujoshi can be taken as a good basis for further exploration of fudanshi in South Korea: The reason that male fans of BL in South Korea are basically invisible is that machismo and patriarchy are so influential in this

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society. Machismo and patriarchy in Korea will never accept male homosexuality, and many Korean males are still very homophobic. Even though there are lots of male fans of various subcultures (e.g., anime and manga), I don’t think these men could ever accept male homosexuality. (“Hyunwoo”) The following comments made by South Korean fudanshi clearly throw light on the existence of a queer mindset within a South Korean culture otherwise characterized by hegemonic masculinity and homophobia. BL manga foreground the ways in which South Korean fudanshi question the value and validity of heteronormativity: —When I was in the first year of junior high school, a female friend introduced me to BL. I was astonished and thought: “I never dreamed that such a beautiful world could exist.” (“Jiwon”) —I feel a bit hesitant to say this, but I became a crazy fan of BL. I can simply say that I love BL. However, having read BL for a while, I’ve begun to wonder what my sexual orientation is. Before reading BL, I was never attracted to both women and men. (“Youngchul”) —When my friend found out that I read BL, he asked if I was gay. I wonder why it’s OK for women to read GL, while men who read BL get picked on. (“Jungho”) As mentioned above, my approach to fudanshi studies defines its meanings and effects in terms of the subconscious desire to be loved that shota discourse represents. In August 2018, I interviewed an eighteen-year-old South Korean heterosexual fudanshi who calls himself “Tony.” Tony also brought up the topic of shota to illustrate his pleasure and desire in consuming BL works: “I believe that my sexual orientation is hetero. But I’m not sure my sexual orientation will be consistent in the future. One of the reasons why I love reading BL is that I love shota (as well as rori [i.e., rorikon]), which came from Japan. I like shota characters wearing knee-length pants. I can’t explain why I love those shota characters.” When I explained to him my hypothesis concerning the psychology of shota-loving fudanshi, he said, “I can relate that to myself to some extent, considering my family issues.” Overall, he disagreed with my hypothesis, however, saying, “My shota-loving is mainly based on the



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simple idea that anything which is cute should be loved. Shota is cute, isn’t it? Then it should be loved.” Here the important debate over the role of shota with regard to self-identified heterosexual fudanshi discourse can be discussed in terms of the psychological process of projection. Acts of projection are diverse, not limited to one specific person (or character). As BL critic-fan Senda Yuki mentions, in reading BL works she simultaneously identifies with the lover and the beloved: In my case, I certainly feel relieved in reading stories about lovable oyaji [middle-aged male] characters, since they reassure me that I’m OK as I am now. BL manga works like Uchida [Kaoru]’s, which depict gorilla-like uke characters, enable me to affirm that I’m also qualified to be an otome [pure, innocent maiden]. A BL uke-oyaji character who is depicted with pubic hair definitely represents one of my alter egos. Another aspect of my alter ego also loves that image of oyaji with pubic hair.22 In this context, we can consider the beloved shota and the dominant lover of the shota as an integration of alter egos. Implicit in this psychological attachment to shota is the notion of self-expression rather than representation of reality. This idea echoes Patrick Galbraith’s analysis of the male-oriented rorikon phenomenon in Japan. Galbraith asserts that rorikon displays an understanding of a male desire to be loved (a desire for femininity), despite its seemingly concrete expression of male sexual desire to dominate girls.23 The attachment Tony, quoted above, feels toward shota characters as “something cute which should be loved” constitutes the basis for his subconscious desire to both dominantly love the shota and to be loved as the shota. My initial inter-Asian research on self-identified heterosexual fudanshi indicates that the problematic aspects of hegemonic masculinity which both Yoshimoto and I discuss in relation to Japanese fudanshi also apply to fudanshi in Hong Kong and South Korea. As in Japan, the shota genre constitutes another significant feature of fudanshi discourse in the other two regions. The idea of shota embodies, both explicitly and implicitly, a perspective from which we can effectively discuss the overall reading practices of fudanshi in relation to such ways of representing identity and sexuality. However, the specific sociocultural characteristics that influence BL fudanshi must also be considered in order to avoid any

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simple transcultural essentialization of fudanshi identity. As we have seen, the very basis of hegemonic masculinity varies in Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. As pointed out by several of my interviewees, we need to acknowledge the idiosyncratic differences among individuals and cultures in relation to our bodies, sexuality, and forms of sexual pleasure. These are constantly fluid, as Yoshimoto confesses in terms of his understanding of his own sexual orientation. However, my analysis (that is, one possible discourse) regarding heterosexual fudanshi will have some value if it elucidates how the erotic narratives expressed in BL represent a kind of salvation for some male heterosexual BL readers precisely because BL enables them to escape the oppressive burden of feeling obliged to actively take the initiative in sex in accordance with prevalent socioculturally constructed masculine stereotypes.

Notes  1.  See Kazumi Nagaike, “Do Heterosexual Men Dream of Homosexual Men? BL Fudanshi and Discourse on Male Feminization,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 2. Yoshimoto Taimatsu, Fudanshi ni kiku (Japan: Miruku Kyarameru, 2008), 30. 3. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku, 30. 4. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku, 60. 5. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku 2 (Japan: Miruku * Kyarameru, 2010), 41. 6. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku 2, 41–42. 7. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku, 29–30. 8. Yoshimoto, Fudanshi ni kiku, 35. 9. See Kazumi Nagaike, Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica (Leiden: Brill, 2012), for a detailed analysis of female beating fantasies, which can also be discussed in terms of the three-stage Freudian structure. Freud emphasizes the differences between male and female beating fantasies, although he focuses more on the psychological orientation underlying female beating fantasies in this famous article (see note 10). 10.  See Sigmund Freud, “‘A Child Is Being Beaten’: A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1955).



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11.  Tamaki Saitō, “Otaku Sexuality,” trans. Christopher Bolton, in Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams, ed. Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 245. 12.  See Nagayama Kaoru, Ero manga stadīzu (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2006), which also analyzes men’s desire for shota in terms of their subconscious desire to “become cute boys themselves” (241). 13.  I have been conducting fudanshi interviews from 2012 to the present (September 2018). Interviews with Japanese men have been conducted in Japanese, with Korean men in Korean (with assistance), and other men in English. Translations of interview participants’ comments into English are by me unless otherwise indicated. 14. Kaneda Junko, “Manga dōjinshi: Kaishaku kyōdōtai no porichikkusu,” in Bunka no shakai gaku, ed. Satō Kenji and Yoshimi Shun’ya (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 2007). 15. Travis Kong, “Chinese Male Bodies: A Transnational Study of Masculinity and Sexuality,” in Routledge Handbook of Body Studies, ed. Bryan S. Turner (London: Routledge, 2012). 16.  Travis Kong, “Romancing the Boundary: Client Masculinities in the Chinese Sex Industry,” Culture, Health and Sexuality 17, no. 7 (2015): 816. 17.  The orientation of feminization is not totally new to Hong Kong or to Hong Kong people per se. Mainland China has often been seen epistemologically and ontologically as the masculine “other” to Hong Kong, even after Hong Kong’s return in 1997. For example, the Hong Kong film Happy Together (1997) presents Hong Kongers’ fears, anxiety, and uncertainty in relation to the dominance of mainland China through the story of a Hong Kong gay couple’s journey to Buenos Aires, the geographic polar opposite of Hong Kong. 18. In Oretachi no BL ron (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 2016), two Japanese heterosexual fudanshi show how, in accordance with their psychological orientation, they can transfer the male–male eroticism of BL into their heterosexual lovemaking by taking a passive position in which they are loved and petted by a seme-like or phallic woman. 19. Sun Jung, Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 26–28. 20.  I conducted these interviews in Korean via email with the help of my Korean research assistants. My questions and comments addressed to the Korean interview participants were translated from Japanese to Korean for

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the interviews; subsequently, comments made by the interview participants were translated from Korean directly to English by my research assistants. 21.  Kyung Hyun Kim, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 288n27. 22. Senda Yuki, “Kifujin, moshikuwa, Ochō-fujin no hisoyaka na tanoshimi,” Yurīka 44, no. 15 (2012): 69–70. 23. Patrick W. Galbraith, “Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan,” Image and Narrative 12, no. 1 (2011): 103, http://www .imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/127/98.

chapter 19

From Legends to Games to Homoerotic Fiction Dynasty Warriors BL Texts from China, Japan, and Taiwan Asako P. Saito

That the Chinese legend of Three Kingdoms—dominated as it is by male characters and the homosocial themes of brotherhood—can inspire the creation of boys love (BL) narratives is not difficult to infer, at least not for fans of the male homoerotic genre. The legend is based on the figures and events from an oft-mythologized period of Chinese history; its memorable characters and timeless themes of war and alliances are familiar to audiences throughout China and in many parts of Asia. While most people in East Asia know Three Kingdoms through the canonical texts from the third and fourteenth centuries, some may be introduced to the legend through the medium of video games, the most famous and successful of which is arguably the Japanese-produced Dynasty Warriors series (Japanese: Shin sangoku musō; Mandarin: Zhen sanguo wushuang). With its “hack and slash” gameplay and ahistorical character designs, Dynasty Warriors is far from an orthodox representation of the Three Kingdoms legend. Nevertheless, the game series breathes new life into the handsome mythological heroes for a contemporary audience. In so doing, it cultivates fertile ground for BL interpretation. In this chapter, I consider the successive transnational transformations of the Three Kingdoms legend as it is interpreted within the contemporary Japanese gaming world, the result of which is then viewed through the lens of BL fan communities (hereafter, BL communities) in Asia. Namely, I analyze BL texts from the People’s Republic of China 257

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(China), Japan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) that have been inspired by the Dynasty Warriors games. I begin with a brief overview of BL communities in these three locations and proceed with an outline of theories that link BL to the Dynasty Warriors games and the Three Kingdoms legend. To demonstrate these theories, I describe and analyze three Dynasty Warriors BL narratives (hereafter, DWBL) found in texts from China, Japan, and Taiwan. DWBL narratives highlight a key site of cross-cultural intersection among BL, gaming, and legends. In so doing, these narratives not only challenge orthodox interpretations of Three Kingdoms but also contribute to our understanding of BL from a transnational perspective. As will be discussed below, the linking of the traditional Three Kingdoms legend with the contemporary worlds of video games and BL is not without controversy. However, I argue that DWBL is an example of the legend’s endurance and its ability to inspire the creation of countless adaptations throughout history. As such, DWBL and other unconventional interpretations of Three Kingdoms should be viewed as part of the legend’s long-term and transnational process of transformation. It is worth noting here that male–male intimacy, the central theme of BL, has a long and institutionalized history in China. In imperial China, much like the Tokugawa period in Japan, sexual relations between men were a common and even celebrated part of court life, as long as they married women and produced heirs.1 This is in stark contrast to recent policy decisions that have sought to limit the exposure of queer culture. Nonetheless, almost two thousand years later, the intense male bonds at the center of the Three Kingdoms legend still inform contemporary notions of masculinity in China and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other Confucian societies in East Asia.2

An Overview of BL in China, Japan, and Taiwan BL communities around the world are “glocal” in the sense that they have both “universalizing and particularizing tendencies.”3 As this and other chapters in this volume demonstrate, they are shaped not only by BL and BL-inspiring media from beyond their own communities, but also by specific local customs and circumstances. Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese BL communities are no exception, and all participate in a complex and transnational process of cross-fertilization. The ongoing circulation of texts across BL communities, whether left in their



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original languages or translated by fans and occasionally by the authors themselves, complicates any attempts to categorize the communities as discrete and their texts as totally indigenous to a particular place. Although the emergence of unofficial translated copies of Japanese BL texts in Taiwan and China initially spurred the creation of locally produced works that closely resembled the styles and conventions in Japanese BL,4 Taiwanese and Chinese BL communities have since faced challenges and developed characteristics that differ from their counterparts in Japan. Nonetheless, there are broad similarities among BL communities in China, Japan, and Taiwan. Studies conducted within all three cultural contexts suggest that BL fans are more likely to identify as female5 and heterosexual,6 but there are also considerable numbers of heterosexual male and LGBT fans.7 Regardless of their gender identities or sexual orientations, many Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese fans conceal their interest in BL due to social stigma surrounding the fandom and nonheteronormative practices in general.8 Recent studies also indicate that people of many ages in these regions consume BL9 in contrast to the common perception that it is a youth-dominated fandom. Certain BL conventions are also widely accepted and reproduced across these communities. For instance, characters in BL narratives are often labeled as active (Japanese: seme; Mandarin: gong) or passive (Japanese: uke; Mandarin: shou) to determine their roles during social and sexual exchanges.10 While it is not uncommon to apply the active/ passive division to mirror heteronormative and gender-based power imbalances, recent studies in China and Japan suggest that this practice is shifting to reflect more diverse understandings of gender and sexuality.11 A notable point of divergence for these communities is in relation to the regulation and restriction of BL texts in online spaces. The Internet plays a considerable role in the production, consumption, and dissemination of BL in China, Japan, and Taiwan.12 However, homophobic policies that guide Chinese online censorship pose obstacles for BL-related activities within and outside of China. Chinese authorities have censored BL content,13 blocked and shut down websites, and arrested writers,14 one of whom was sentenced to ten years in prison.15 Similarly, portrayals of homosexuality were officially banned from Chinese television in late 2015,16 and from Chinese websites in 2017.17 More recently, the global popularity of

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Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, an app that boasts over a billion downloads, has also led to the censorship of queer content outside of China.18 Such policies have prompted Chinese BL communities to self-censor their material19 and to adopt clandestine methods for BL distribution,20 reverberating with BL fan practices elsewhere in Asia, including Singapore, discussed in this volume by Aerin Lai. In contrast, Japanese and Taiwanese BL communities have relative freedom to engage in their online fan-related activities.

From Three Kingdoms to DWBL: Theoretical Considerations of BL, Gaming, and Legends DWBL may be conceptualized as the product of successive transnational interpretations. In other words, these narratives arise from a series of transformations which involve multiple actors and cultural understandings. In this process, the Three Kingdoms legend is percolated through the Dynasty Warriors games and local BL subcultures; the product emerges in the form of DWBL. This transformation might be understood with reference to Prasenjit Duara’s idea of superscription21 and Patrick Galbraith’s explanation of “rotten filters.”22 The enduring continuity of the Three Kingdoms legend is made possible via the process of superscription. Based on the figures and events from the second to third century, the Chinese tale is best known via its canonical texts: the third-century text Records of the Three Kingdoms and the fourteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Today, the legend is often depicted in media such as films, television dramas, and, more recently, video games. These adaptations may conform to or challenge the canonical texts. Yet, the “essence” of the Three Kingdoms remains, due to what Duara describes as the “simultaneously continuous and discontinuous”23 nature of myths and legends. Citing the deified figure Guan Yu from Three Kingdoms as an example, Duara explains that while certain interpretations of Guan Yu gained favor and have been preserved, others were forgotten and lost to history. As these interpretations compete over time, dominant versions are superscribed over—or written above—extant ones. Crucially, previous versions are not completely erased but rather assimilated into the dominant versions. Different versions of Guan Yu and Three Kingdoms are thus “linked in a semantic chain”24 that spans centuries to extend the legend to the present day. It is in such a way that superscription realizes



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a diverse range of contemporary Three Kingdoms adaptations both within and beyond China. The continuous and discontinuous nature of the Three Kingdoms legend is demonstrated in the Japanese-produced Dynasty Warriors games. First released by Koei (now Koei Tecmo) in 1997 for Sony’s PlayStation game system, as of 2020 the series currently has forty games with a total of over 21 million copies sold worldwide.25 Dynasty Warriors is a third-person-view (i.e., the player is represented by a character onscreen) combat series with the goal of defeating rival kingdoms and uniting China. As an example of the legend’s continuity, gamers may progress through the various stages of the Three Kingdoms storyline as one of its characters. However, the series is perhaps best known for its redefinition of the legendary characters in their appearance and clothing, most of which are not historically accurate. In this way, Dynasty Warriors superscribes the legends of Three Kingdoms through a combination of preservation and reinvention. Nevertheless, the unorthodox and transnational aspects of Dynasty Warriors have led to vocal opposition from academics, media commentators, and online communities in China. Benjamin Wai-Ming Ng sees such disapproval as an issue of “controversy over the transformation of tradition,”26 which is exacerbated by the Japanese origin of the games. Chinese cultural fundamentalists and cultural nationalists view Japanese interpretations of Three Kingdoms as “stealing, distorting and destroying Chinese traditions.”27 For instance, these commentators take issue with the ways in which Dynasty Warriors not only feminizes the male characters in their appearance in keeping with contemporary game aesthetics, but also allows players to change the course of Chinese history within the game.28 Regardless of such opposition, the series continues to perform well in China and other Asian markets.29 Despite its unorthodox interpretation of the Three Kingdoms legend, Dynasty Warriors thus continues to be a popular link in the semantic chain of transnational superscription. The Three Kingdoms legend is further extended through “rotten filters,” which are applied to the Dynasty Warriors games to create DWBL. The “rotten” nature of these filters brings attention to the self-identification of many female BL fans as “rotten women” (Japanese: fujoshi; Mandarin: funü) in reference to their queer fantasies that challenge mainstream heteronormative romance patterns. As Galbraith explains in his study of Japanese BL fans, “rotten filters” can “screen . . . out

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the potential for heteronormative romance in [the fans’] fantasy and emphasize . . . signs of transgressive intimacy.”30 In other words, these filters can identify and highlight homoerotic signs while suppressing heterosexual elements. According to this understanding, BL fans may use these “rotten filters” to expose the potential for male–male relationships in the Dynasty Warriors games. As such, DWBL is made possible through transnational superscription followed by the application of “rotten filters,” with Three Kingdoms as its base. While cultural fundamentalists may find BL fans’ use of “rotten filters” on Three Kingdoms subversive, the sexualization of these male heroes is neither a new nor a fringe practice. Although heteronormative and platonic readings dominate scholarly and political discussions of the legend, Chinese nonliterati folklore versions are not only overtly sexual, but also take male–male sexual relations for granted.31 In this sense, by engaging in a sexual reading of Three Kingdoms, BL fans are simply “making visible what they claim had always been there.”32 In so doing, “rotten filters” enable the long tradition of superscribing Three Kingdoms characters as men who love men.

Dynasty Warriors as BL Dōjinshi In this section I summarize and analyze three DWBL texts from China, Japan, and Taiwan in relation to the theories of superscription and “rotten filters.” The texts from China and Taiwan are written in Chinese script and the text from Japan in Japanese, and all are or have been accessible to their respective BL communities at time of publication.33 For ease of comparison, I have selected texts which all center on the characters Sun Ce (Japanese: Sonsaku) and Zhou Yu (Japanese: Shūyu), who were both warriors of the Eastern Wu kingdom. Although the Japanese text refers to the Three Kingdoms figures by their Japanese names, here I use the Mandarin names to avoid confusion. Despite this commonality, these three texts vary greatly in terms of content, medium, and degree of sexual explicitness, and are not intended to be representative of the genre or of the respective BL communities. Rather, I have deliberately selected narratives which highlight not only the intersection of BL, gaming, and legends, but also the enormous range of DWBL and the wider BL fandom. “The Little Match-Selling Girl with a Red Riding Hood” (Mai huochai de xiaohongmao) was posted to the Chinese fan-fiction website Jinjiang



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Literature City (www.jjwxc.net) in 2012 by a writer using the pseudonym Qiritaotie.34 This is a short prose narrative that not only parodies Dynasty Warriors but also several European folktales, with a focus on Little Red Riding Hood and The Little Match Girl. The story follows Sun Ce as he travels through the woods to bring food and wine to his grandmother, who is portrayed by Zhou Yu. Sun Ce encounters other parodies of Three Kingdoms figures along the way, including the long-eared monster Liu Bei and an evil witch named Zhuge Liang. Not long after an encounter with a wolf, Zhou Yu as the grandmother passes away while begging for a sip of wine, which was unfortunately stolen by Zhuge Liang. This is followed by a series of further misfortunes in Sun Ce’s life, namely the death of his father and the fiscally driven nuptials of his sister to the monster Liu Bei. Consequently, Sun Ce vows to provide for his family by selling matches. Wandering around in the snow, Sun Ce desperately strikes matches to keep warm. To his surprise, a vision of Zhou Yu appears in the glow of a match. The story concludes with the two of them flying upward into the sky, seemingly symbolizing their reunion in the afterlife. The Japanese text, the title of which I have withheld at the writer’s request, is a so-called “light novel,”35 written and published by a Japanese-based BL circle (i.e., group) in 2015.36 Zhou Yu, the protagonist, believes that his romantic feelings for Sun Ce are not reciprocated. Even though the two frequently engage in sexual relations, Zhou Yu remains convinced that Sun Ce simply sees him as a friend. To cope with what he assumes is unrequited love, Zhou Yu attempts to placate himself with a physical, rather than a romantic, relationship with Sun Ce. It is not until the climactic scene filled with intense discussion and lovemaking that Zhou Yu realizes his mistake: Sun Ce loves him after all. Finally, “Gynecomastia” (Nai zhenghouqun) (fig. 19.1) is a playful four-panel comic by a Taiwanese writer known as BB.37 It is one of several short comics by this author that are featured in a 2005 noncommercially published anthology of DWBL. In the first panel, a visibly distressed Sun Ce moves to embrace Zhou Yu, who appears stunned. The second panel shows them still in embrace with Sun Ce’s hands resting on Zhou Yu’s chest. Looking concerned, Zhou Yu asks Sun Ce what has upset him. In the next frame, Sun Ce tightens his grip on Zhou Yu’s chest and inquires what happened to his bountiful breasts (longqi de xiongbu). To conclude the comic, we see a close-up of Sun Ce as Zhou Yu angrily punches him in the face.

Figure 19.1. BB’s four-panel “Gynecomastia” (Nai zhenghouqun), published in Qilin yi fan bao, ed. Mosaic (Taipei: Self-published, 2005). (Courtesy of BB)



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The relationship between Sun Ce and Zhou Yu as portrayed in these DWBL narratives is realized through the combination of superscription and “rotten filters.” The romantic pairing of BL characters is referred to by BL fans in all three states as “coupling,” and relationships that arise from this practice tend to be determined by the homoerotic potential between characters. Accordingly, the coupling of and use of “rotten filters” on Sun Ce and Zhou Yu is not arbitrary but rather an indication of their potential romantic compatibility. Indeed, there are several examples from the Three Kingdoms legend and the Dynasty Warriors games which support and inspire the use of “rotten filters” on these two characters. Evidencing continuity between the canonical Three Kingdoms texts and Dynasty Warriors games, all portray Sun Ce and Zhou Yu as handsome men who have a close personal and professional relationship. For instance, the third-century text Records of the Three Kingdoms describes a scene in which Zhou Yu brings troops to assist Sun Ce in his upcoming battles. In appreciation, Sun Ce directs this suggestive phrase to Zhou Yu: “Now that I have you, we are sure to succeed!” (Wu de qing, xie ye!)38 Furthermore, a deliberate and innovative reimagining of the legendary characters is shown in the Japanese version of Dynasty Warriors through the use of pronouns. As an indication of their close relationship, Zhou Yu refers to Sun Ce with the informal, intimate second-person singular pronoun kimi, even though he uses the formal second-person singular pronoun anata when speaking to other people of higher ranking. In this way, Zhou Yu distinguishes his relationship with Sun Ce from his relationships with other higher-ranking individuals as an indication of their exceptional relationship, platonic or otherwise. Therefore, both the canonical texts and Dynasty Warriors games include elements which, at least for fans of BL, may be interpreted as suggesting the potential for romantic intimacy between Sun Ce and Zhou Yu. To BL fans, such details inspire the application of “rotten filters.” In demonstration of the legend’s continuity and discontinuity, DWBL narratives superscribe various versions of Three Kingdoms. To illustrate, the Chinese text makes several references to the fourteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the short story, Zhou Yu dies while begging for the bottle of wine that has been stolen by Zhuge Liang. This scene alludes to Zhuge Liang’s involvement in Zhou Yu’s death, as occurs in the novel. The connection to the novel is further reinforced with the short story’s faithful reproduction of Zhou Yu’s last words. Looking heavenward, he cries: “After making me, Zhou Yu, did you have to make

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Zhuge Liang?” (Ji sheng Yu, he sheng Liang?).39 In another nod to the novel, the marriage between the long-eared monster Liu Bei and Sun Ce’s sister reflects not only Liu Bei’s unusually long ears,40 but also the strategic nature of their marriage. Another example of superscription is found in the Taiwanese text, which makes clear references to the Dynasty Warriors games. Sun Ce and Zhou Yu are both drawn with the appearance and clothing in the style of the popular series. In addition, the comment concerning Zhou Yu’s “bountiful breasts” alludes to his character’s apparent voluptuousness portrayed in the third and fourth games of the Japanese series, in which the draping of Zhou Yu’s clothing gives the appearance of female breasts. These examples show that Duara’s concept of superscription is realized by way of the semantic chain which links DWBL narratives with the Three Kingdoms legend. The use of “rotten filters” is also evident in DWBL narratives. The homoerotic subtext of the Chinese and Taiwanese texts is subtle and largely implied. The former is complicated by its underlying theme of folk tales and the author’s decision to cast Sun Ce and Zhou Yu in roles which, based on the respective tales, are not only female but also of the same family.41 As such, male–male intimacy is instead insinuated through secondary characters.42 In the Taiwanese text, the “rotten” nature is delicately demonstrated through the physical proximity between Sun Ce and Zhou Yu, and the consequent reddening of Zhou Yu’s face. The Japanese text is by far the most sexually explicit of the three narratives, and here the ostensibly platonic relationship between Sun Ce and Zhou Yu is most clearly rendered “rotten.” This is achieved through the coding of Sun Ce as the active partner and Zhou Yu as the passive one. Accordingly, Sun Ce initiates and dominates all sexual encounters. For example, Zhou Yu performs fellatio on Sun Ce, and Sun Ce is the penetrative partner in occasions of anal intercourse. Sun Ce’s dominance in the relationship is also reinforced through nonsexual means. In one nail-biting scene, the two lovers have intercourse while Sun Ce has a conversation with his unsuspecting wife, Da Qiao, who is on the other side of the wall. In spite of what he is doing on his side of the wall, Sun Ce chats with Da Qiao in a cool and composed manner. This is contrasted with Zhou Yu’s near-uncontrollable titillation in reaction to the unfolding events. In this scene, the “rotten filters” fulfill the two objectives as outlined by Galbraith; namely, they not only identify and highlight the sexual compatibility of Sun Ce and Zhou Yu, but also diminish the heterosexual relationship between Sun Ce and his wife.



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The Japanese text thus delineates and reveals the seemingly “rotten” nature of their relationship. This chapter has argued that DWBL narratives are linked with the Three Kingdoms legend and Dynasty Warriors games in a semantic chain of successive, transnational, and “rotten” superscriptions. Through a combination of preservation and innovation, the three texts build on the foundations of the legend and games to make explicit the supposedly “rotten” relationships between Three Kingdoms characters. The three texts also demonstrate the glocal nature of BL communities in China, Japan, and Taiwan; they not only identify and reproduce the familiar trope of “coupling,” but also reflect the genre’s diversity in content, medium, and sexual explicitness. Moreover, the case of DWBL exemplifies James Welker’s description of BL as composed of “a shifting mix of elements from high and low culture.”43 Here we see the juxtaposition and blending of traditional culture (Three Kingdoms) with contemporary culture (Dynasty Warriors and BL), thereby highlighting the intersection of BL, gaming, and legends. Unlike most other BL fan fiction, which is typically based on a manga or anime series, DWBL is unusual in that it is based not only on a game series but also on games which reference history. Moreover, in contrast to the subjects of previous research on the intersection of BL and gaming, such as “choose your own adventure”–style BL games44 and BL dōjinshi (fanzines) inspired by a Japanese role-playing game,45 the characters and events depicted within Dynasty Warriors are based on reality rather than fiction. Due to the games’ connection to Chinese history, cultural nationalists have expressed concern regarding the adaptation of the Three Kingdoms legend into Japanese popular culture. This raises the contentious issue of cultural ownership, which concerns whether a state or a group of people may claim sole ownership over a cultural text, such as a legend. In the case of Three Kingdoms, the issue of ownership is complicated not only by the centuries of Japanese-produced adaptations, but also by the popularity of the Japanese adaptations in China and Taiwan, and even beyond the Sinosphere. Given these considerations, to whom do we attribute cultural ownership of DWBL, which lie at the intersection of a Chinese legend, a Japanese game series, and the BL genre? Regardless of whether we agree with the views of cultural nationalists, DWBL demonstrates that with the increasingly transnational circulation of media, cultural ownership, much like efforts to assign nationality to BL itself, is sometimes much messier and more difficult to attribute than we may like.

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Notes Research for this chapter was supported by the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Taiwan Fellowship. 1.  Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), 134–135; Gary Leupp, Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 3. 2.  For examples of men in contemporary China who draw upon Three Kingdoms for their conceptualizations of masculinity, see Geng Song and Derek Hird, Men and Masculinities in Contemporary China (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 37, 164, 189, 191. 3. Roland Robertson, “Comments on the ‘Global Triad’ and ‘Glocalization’,” in Globalization and Indigenous Culture, ed. Nobutaka Inoue (Tokyo: Kokugakuin University, 1997), http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc /wp/global/15robertson.html. 4.  See Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang’s chapter in this volume, as well as Wang Peiti, “Yinshen zai tongzhi hunyin pingquan yundong zhong de funu shen­ ying,” Dong Hwa Journal of Humanities and Social Science 13 (2017), originally posted at http://journal.ndhu.edu.tw/e_paper/e_paper_c.php?SID=208, currently accessible through the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org /web/20170611124919/http:/journal.ndhu.edu.tw/e_paper/e_paper_c .php?SID=208. 5.  See Mark McLelland and Seunghyun Yoo, “The International Yaoi Boys’ Love Fandom and the Regulation of Virtual Pornography: Current Legislation and Its Implications,” Journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy 4, no. 1 (2007); Rachel (Matt) Thorn, “Girls and Women Getting Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan’s Amateur Comics Community,” in Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan, ed. William W. Kelly (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004); and Chunyu Zhang, “Loving Boys Twice as Much: Chinese Women’s Paradoxical Fandom of ‘Boys’ Love’ Fiction,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 3 (2016). 6.  Dai Fei, “Gaoxiao funu cunzai xianzhuang ji xiangguan wenti fenxi,” Journal of Campus Life & Mental Health 12, no. 2 (2014): 106–107. For a discussion of heterosexual BL fans who may also be seen as “virtual lesbians,” see chap. 5 in Mizoguchi Akiko, BL shinkaron: Bōizu rabu ga sekai o ugokasu (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 2015).



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7. See chapters by Thomas Baudinette and Kazumi Nagaike in this volume. 8.  Feichi Chiang, “Counterpublic but Obedient: A Case of Taiwan’s BL Fandom,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2016); Feng Jin, Romancing the Internet: Producing and Consuming Chinese Web Romance (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 56; Patrick W. Galbraith, “Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among ‘Rotten Girls’ in Contemporary Japan,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37, no. 1 (2011): 212. 9. See Senda Yuki, “Kifu jin, moshiku wa ochōfujin no hisoka na tanoshimi,” Yurīka 44, no. 15 (2012); and Feng, Romancing the Internet, 13. 10. Chiang, “Counterpublic but Obedient,” 229; Nagakubo Yōko, Yaoi shōsetsuron: Josei no tame no erosu hyōgen (Tokyo: Senshū Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 2005), chap. 1; and Feng, Romancing the Internet, 77. 11.  See Xu and Yang’s chapter; and chap. 4 in Mizoguchi, BL shinkaron. 12. See McLelland and Yoo, “The International Yaoi Boys’ Love Fandom”; and Feng, Romancing the Internet. 13.  Phoebe Zhang, “Chinese ‘Gay Fiction’ Website Told to Stop Publishing Obscene Content,” South China Morning Post, May 24, 2019, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3011679/chinese-gay-fiction -website-told-stop-publishing-obscene-content. 14.  Quanguo “sao huang da fei” gongzuo xiaozu bangongshi (China’s National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office), “Sao huang da fei yanli daji wangluo yinhui seqing xiaoshuo,” May 15, 2012, http://www.shdf.gov.cn/shdf/contents/767/47507.html. 15.  Alison Flood, “Chinese Writer Tianyi Sentenced to Decade in Prison for Gay Erotic Novel,” The Guardian, November 21, 2018, https://www .theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/20/chinese-writer-tianyi-sentenced -to-decade-in-prison-for-gay-erotic-novel. 16. Zhongguo dianshiju zhizuo chanye xiehui (China Television Drama Production Industry Association), “Dianshiju neirong zhizuo tongze,” December 31, 2015, http://www.ctpia.com.cn/exchange/zcxx /2015‑12‑31/1451534140473.shtml. 17. Zhongguo wangluo shiting jiemu fuwu xiehui (China Netcasting Services Association), “Zhongguo wangluo shiting jiemu fuwu xiehui fabu ‘wangluo shiting jiemu neirong shenhe tongze’,” June 30, 2017, http:// www.cnsa.cn/2017/06/30/ARTI0Qg4cp7jtd1Z5o0RnfzM170630.shtml. 18.  Alex Hern, “TikTok’s Local Moderation Guidelines Ban Pro-LGBT Content,” The Guardian, September 26, 2019, https://www.theguardian

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.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-local-moderation-guidelines-ban -pro-lgbt-content. 19.  John Wei, “Queer Encounters between Iron Man and Chinese Boys’ Love Fandom,” Transformative Works and Cultures 17 (2014), http://journal .transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/561/458. 20.  See chap. 4 in Katrien Jacobs, The Afterglow of Women’s Pornography in Post-Digital China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 21. Prasenjit Duara, “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of War,” Journal of Asian Studies 47, no. 4 (1988). 22.  Galbraith, “Fujoshi.” 23.  Duara, “Superscribing Symbols,” 778. 24.  Duara, “Superscribing Symbols,” 791. 25. Koei Tecmo, “Rainnappu,” https://www.gamecity.ne.jp/smusou /#lineup; DenFamiNicoGamer, “‘Shin sangokumusō’ shirīzu ga 20 shūnen o mukae, kinen bijuaru mūbī o kōkai. Sekai ruikei hanbaisū 2100 manbon ijō ni tassuru shirīzu no rekishi to, arata na butai no jōhō mo,” August 3, 2020, https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/news/200803l. 26.  Benjamin Wai-Ming Ng, “The Adaptation of Chinese History into Japanese Popular Culture: A Study of Japanese Manga, Animated Series and Video Games Based on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” in Manga and the Representation of Japanese History, ed. Roman Rosenbaum (London: Routledge, 2013), 235. 27.  Ng, “The Adaptation of Chinese History,” 235. 28.  Ng, “The Adaptation of Chinese History,” 240, 244. 29. Koei Tecmo, “Annual Report 2016,” 25, https://www.koeitecmo .co.jp/ir/docs/ird4_20160930.pdf. 30.  Galbraith, “Fujoshi,” 221. 31.  Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 33. 32. Xiaofei Tian, “Slashing Three Kingdoms: A Case Study in Fan Production on the Chinese Web,” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (2015): 231. 33.  The Japanese and Taiwanese texts were sold at the comic conventions Comic Market 89 (Tokyo 2015) and Comic World Taiwan (Taipei 2005), respectively. The Chinese text was accessed on the website Jinjiang Literature City. 34.  Qiritaotie, “Mai huochai de xiaohongmao,” Jinjiang Literature City, July 25, 2012, http://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=1584212. 35.  A light novel (raito noberu) is a style of Japanese literature that generally targets young adults.



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36.  The Japanese text was self-published in 2015 and distributed at fan conventions. I have de-identified information concerning this text to protect the writer’s privacy. 37.  BB, “Nai zhenghouqun,” in Qilin yi fan bao, ed. Mosaic (Taipei: Selfpublished, 2005), 96. 38.  Chen Shou, Records of the Three Kingdoms, vol. 54 (Beijing: Beijing Guoxue Shidai Wenhua Chuanbo, 2003), http://www.guoxue.com /shibu/24shi/sangzz/sgzz_054.htm. 39.  Moss Roberts, Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 305. 40. Roberts, Three Kingdoms, 6. 41.  For research on BL with a focus on incest, see Yanrui Xu and Ling Yang, “Forbidden Love: Incest, Generational Conflict, and the Erotics of Power in Chinese BL fiction,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 4, no. 1 (2013). 42.  The secondary characters in question are Cao Pi and Zhao Yun, who are cast in the roles of Snow White and her prince, respectively. However, even here the BL nature is questionable due to the feminization of Cao Pi as a princess. 43.  James Welker, “A Brief History of Shōnen’ai, Yaoi, and Boys Love,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 42. 44.  Andrea Wood, “Choose Your Own Queer Erotic Adventure: Young Adults, Boys’ Love Computer Games, and the Sexual Politics of Visual Play,” in Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature, ed. Michelle Ann Abate and Kenneth Kidd (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). 45. Lucy Hannah Glasspool, “Simulation and Database Society in Japanese Role-Playing Game Fandoms: Reading Boys’ Love Dōjinshi Online,” Transformative Works and Cultures 12 (2013), http://journal.trans formativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/433.

Afterword Boys Love as a World-Shaping Genre James Welker

Boys love (BL) is a truly transnational, transcultural genre that unsettles gender and sexual norms, including increasing support for the LGBT(Q) community and its allies, and in so doing has tangible culturo-political effects that, on the whole, play a positive role in the lives of fans and others—attributes of BL I outlined in the Introduction to this volume. In their examination of the BL media phenomenon in Asia, the chapters in Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia have illustrated these attributes in various contexts, from various perspectives. As the authors of these chapters have demonstrated through their diverse approaches to the genre in Asia, BL has been transfigured by local fans and creators, as well as by distributors and others in East, Southeast, and South Asia. Given the global nature of BL fan networks and of the genre’s distribution through formal and informal channels, it is no exaggeration to say that the effects of BL’s consumption and transfiguration within Asia extend far beyond this part of the world. Yet, the flows of BL and its concomitant effects are neither linear nor unidirectional. Indeed, BL is interwoven into broader global matrices of popular media and fandoms, as we can see, for example, in the ways queer genres and fandoms from outside Asia—including slash and its highly popular manifestation, Omegaverse—have continued to (re) shape BL within it. And vice versa. In the Introduction, I explained that the concept of “transfiguration,” as I define it, calls for us to seek out and examine “ripples of change” emanating from processes of transfiguration, ripples that may reach back to the source culture of the transfigured thing. Local manifestations of BL media, most prominently prose fiction and live-action

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dramas, produced in countries including China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam are attracting increasingly regional as well as global fandoms, as I have just suggested above. A cursory search of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube or of websites of questionable legality used for sharing media files will quickly provide ample evidence thereof in myriad languages. Over the course of the past decade, greater China and Thailand have become the most noteworthy producers of BL media outside Japan. While an everincreasing amount of licensed and pirated danmei fiction from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan can be found in Chinese and in translation online and in bookstores, and while some live-action dramas derived therefrom, such as the 2019 Chinese TV series The Untamed (Chen qing ling), are immensely popular in some fan spheres, at the start of the 2020s it is live-action BL drama series and films from Thailand that seem to have the broadest regional and global appeal. In fact, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print in Japan,1 Thai live-action BL dramas have exploded in popularity in the genre’s source country. As a sign of this new trend, in 2019 mainstream Japanese media began to draw significant attention to Asian BL, with a particular emphasis on Thai BL, including in a six-part series, “Viewing BL in Asia,” which appeared in the national newspaper Asahi shinbun in December of that year.2 Asian BL—again, especially BL from Thailand—has subsequently been taken up in dozens of articles and features in newspapers and general interest, women’s, and popular culture magazines, as well as in the form of “mooks,” or magazine-books, often produced by the publishers of the same magazines running articles and features on the topic. This attention to Thai BL, sometimes juxtaposed with BL from elsewhere in Asia, is commonly presented as a response to its ballooning popularity in Japan and globally.3 Readers are regularly reminded that the genre was first created in Japan, sometimes in a tone that hearkens back to the cultural pride expressed in response to the “Cool Japan” boom that began not quite two decades prior.4 The Thai BL drama stars themselves, sometimes juxtaposed with other attractive male stars from Japan and elsewhere in Asia, are presented as sexually appealing to (heterosexual female) Japanese viewers.5 Thus, in addition to whatever contribution they may be making locally to BL’s ongoing disruption of gender and sexual norms, these Thai BL dramas are part of broader popular cultural currents unsettling persistent ethnonationalist discourse in Japan.

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While BL media widely circulate through unofficial—and often illegal—channels, by the opening of the 2020s distributors began licensing and subtitling Asian live-action BL dramas for broadcast and streaming services in Japan. Foremost among this new media influx, of course, have been Thai BL dramas. Toward the end of 2020, the Tourism Authority of Thailand had begun to promote Thai BL dramas in Japan—no doubt to encourage a new wave of tourism in the forthcoming post-Covid-19 era—via its existing Amazing Thailand program and its new @ThaiBLLovers Japanese-language Twitter account created that October.6 Clearly, in spite of the conservatism of Thai culture with regard to its own popular media,7 the government is not unwilling to deploy BL in the interest of profit and soft power, further proof of the far-reaching effects of the genre. As additional evidence of the rapid rise and extent of the popularity in Japan of Thai BL dramas, the series 2gether—at present (in mid-2021) almost certainly the most prominent BL drama in the country—has been transformed into a transmedia property, part of Japan’s so-called “media mix.”8 Given current trends, it seems likely that the series is but the first of multiple Thai BL dramas to receive this treatment. The transformation of 2gether has been quite rapid, almost certainly an effect of both the consumption power of Japan’s BL fans and of the country’s existing media mix culture. In July 2020, a Japanese-subtitled version of the series, which had been released in Thailand less than six months earlier, was pushed out on various pay-for-view platforms in Japan.9 In October of that year, the novel upon which the series is based, Phro rao khu kan (Because we belong together), was also published in two Japanese-language volumes, both with cover illustrations by Shimura Takako, well known for her manga focused on LGBT themes.10 Finally, in November 2020, the first installment of Okujima Hiromasa’s web comic based on the novel was released on multiple platforms including pixiv,11 a step toward the Japanese manga version of the Thai BL drama being released in print in July 2021.12 Given the recent publication in English of another of Okujima’s manga titles and the global popularity of the Thai drama, it seems likely that the manga version of 2gether will soon be published in English, suggesting that Japan is set to play a role in the further circulation of the Thai BL narrative.13 Reversing that pattern in a sense, in 2021 the Thai media company GMMTV is slated to release a live-action drama series based on Yoshinaga Fumi’s BL-esque, if not necessarily BL, manga series Antique

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Bakery (Seiyō kottō yōgashi ten; 1999–2002)—a work which was, in fact, also adapted into a Korean film with the same title in 2008. Given that GMMTV is the producer of 2gether and other globally popular BL dramas and the content of the promotional clips currently circulating on social media,14 it seems probable that the BL aspects of the narrative will be emphasized in the production. The series, Rak khorng phom, khanom khorng khun (My love, your candy), assigned the English title Baker Boys, will likely be popular in Japan while further calling into question what it means for a BL work to be Thai or Japanese. Although Japan has seen an increasing number of locally produced TV dramas based on existing BL manga and novels, including Antique Bakery in 2001, or more broadly inspired by the BL genre and its themes,15 it remains to be seen the extent to which the popularity of Thai BL dramas will affect the aesthetics, the narratives, and the popularity of future live-action Japanese BL dramas. Nevertheless, the history of the genre notwithstanding, the destabilization of Japan as the center of BL, a process that has been happening elsewhere in Asia for some time,16 may have finally begun in Japan itself. Whether from Japan, Thailand, China, or elsewhere, BL seems imbued with the power, as Mizoguchi Akiko has suggested, to “move the world forward.”17 To be sure, BL is not without its critics in- and outside Japan. While the genre is arguably feminist in effect, as multiple chapters in this volume make clear whether or not they frame it in those terms, BL has been accused of being misogynistic, as Hyojin Kim describes in her chapter on Korea. Other chapters, particularly those focused on Southeast and South Asia, show that the genre is also often considered sinful or at least shameful, even by some of its fans. Conversely, the genre has been accused of objectifying gay men as well as of being homophobic, even though the BL has ardent gay male fans and creators.18 Regardless of such criticism, as Queer Transfigurations has demonstrated in its examination of the genre and its fans, for decades boys love media has been positively reshaping the imaginary and real worlds of its fans and others in Asia and beyond. And it shows no signs of stopping.

Notes 1.  James Welker, “A Brief History of Shōnen’ai, Yaoi, and Boys Love,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 47.

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2.  The article series can be found at “Ajia de miru BL,” Asahi shinbun, December 20, 2019, https://www.asahi.com/special/matome/boyslove/. 3. See, e.g., “2020 BL saishin kīwādo,” in the feature “Bōizurabu ga ugokidasu,” Davinchi, July 2020, 22–23; “Zen sekai o miryoku suru Tai BL dorama senpū,” Shūkan josei, June 16, 2020, 131–133; and Be a Light: Ajia BL dorama gaido, Cosmic Mook (Tokyo: Kosumikku Shuppan, 2020). 4.  E.g., “Tai no dorama sekai ga koi,” Asahi shinbun, October 19, 2020, morning ed., 19. 5. E.g., “Hot na Ajia danshi 39-nin,” An an, September 30, 2020, 98–105; “In rokku bōi 8,” special issue of In rokku, October 2020; and Tai dorama gaido “D,” D TV gaido & mook, no. 41 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Nyūsu ­Tsūshinsha, 2020). 6. “Mune-kyun ga tomaranai, Tai BL dorama ni koi shichaou!” Amazing Thailand (2020), https://www.thailandtravel.or.jp/pr/thai-bl -drama/ (accessed December 8, 2020); Tai Koku Seifu ­Kankō-chō [Thai Tourism Authority] (@AmazingThaiJP), Twitter post, September 28, 2020, 6:05 p.m., https://twitter.com/AmazingThaiJP/status/13105058858866 07362. 7. Thomas Baudinette, “Lovesick, the Series: Adapting Japanese ‘Boys Love’ to Thailand and the Creation of a New Genre of Queer Media,” Southeast Asia Research 27, no. 2 (2019): 119. 8.  Mark Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 9. E.g., 2together (with Japanese subtitles), 13 episodes, RakutenTV, Thailand 2020, https://tv.rakuten.co.jp/content/349936/. 10. JittiRain, 2gether, 2 vols., translated by Sasaki Michi (2017; Tokyo: Wani Bukkusu, 2020). My thanks to Poowin Bunyavejchewin for verifying the original publication date. 11. Okujima Hiromasa and JittiRain, 2gether, episode 1, trans. Sasaki Michi, November 17, 2020, https://comic.pixiv.net/works/7023. 12.  Okujima Hiromasa and JittiRain, 2gether, vol. 1, trans. Sasaki Michi (Tokyo: Wani Bukkusu, 2021). 13. Rafael Antonio Pineda, “Hiromasa Okujima Launches 2gether Manga in November,” Anime News Network, October 19, 2020, https:// www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020‑10‑19/hiromasa-okujima -launches-2gether-manga-in-november/.165348. 14.  GMMTV, “GMMTV 2021 | Baker Boys Rak khorng phom, khanom khorng khun,” YouTube, December 3, 2020, https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=iFZ9SXFcm60.

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15. See, e.g., Fujimoto Yukari, “Ossanzu rabu to iu bunkiten,” in BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā, ed. James Welker (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2019). 16. See, e.g., Thomas Baudinette, “Creative Misreadings of ‘Thai BL’ by a Filipino Fan Community: Dislocating Knowledge Production in Transnational Queer Fandoms through Aspirational Consumption,” Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020). 17.  Mizoguchi Akiko, BL shinkaron: Bōizurabu ga shakai o ugokasu (Tokyo: Ōta Shuppan, 2015). 18.  Maekawa Naoya, “Gei dansei wa BL o dō yondekita ka,” in BL no kyōkasho, ed. Hori Akiko and Mori Naoko (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 2020).

Contributors

Thomas Baudinette is a senior lecturer in international studies at Macquarie University, Australia. As well as researching the Japanese gay media landscape, his ethnographic research explores the circulation of Japanese queer popular culture throughout the Asia-Pacific region. His first book is Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Japan (2021). Together with Katrien Jacobs and Alexandra Hambleton, Thomas has also edited the special issue “East Asian Pornography and Online Porn Cultures” for Porn Studies. More information on Thomas’s current research projects may be found on his academic blog: http://thomasbaudinette .wordpress.com. Poowin Bunyavejchewin is a senior researcher at the Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) at Thammasat University, Thailand, and joint editor-in-chief of its in-house journal, International Journal of East Asian Studies (IJEAS). His research interests include Asia-Pacific security, Thai foreign policy, and BL media. Prior to joining IEAS in December 2013, he was a lecturer at the School of Liberal Arts at Walailak University. He holds an M.A. in International Politics from the University of Hull, U.K., and a B.A. (Honors) in Political Science from Thammasat University. He was awarded Thammasat University’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2014. He was invited as a delegate under the Southeast Asian Young Leaders’ Programme (SEAYLP) to participate in the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, one of the world’s top security forums, in 2017. He has published his research in academic journals such as the Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies and Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities. His opinions on BL trends in Thailand have been quoted in media outlets such as the Asahi shinbun and ABC News. Tricia Abigail Santos Fermin is an assistant professor at the Center for Language Education, Josai International University, in Japan. She completed her doctoral studies in sociology at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. Her main research interests include gender and

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280 Contributors

sexuality, sexual politics in Japan and Southeast Asia, and the sociology of education. Her publications include “Appropriating Yaoi and Boys Love in the Philippines: Conflict, Resistance and Imaginations through and beyond Japan,” in the Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies 13, no. 3 (2013), and “Male Homoerotic Fiction and Women’s Sexual Subjectivities: Yaoi and BL Fans in Indonesia and the Philippines,” in Women and Erotic Fiction: Critical Essays on Genres, Markets and Readers, ed. Kristen Phillips (2015). Gita Pramudita Prameswari is an independent scholar with an M.A. in global studies from Sophia University, Tokyo. She earned her Bachelor of Social Sciences degree at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Oita, Japan, where she wrote a graduation thesis about the representation of Islam in boys love manga. She currently devotes herself to making Japanese manga more accessible for global readers through legal channels. Han Hau Lai is an independent scholar in Hong Kong and holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests focus on youth subcultures on gender and sexuality in China. Katrien Jacobs is an associate professor in cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the program director of the M.A. in Visual Culture Studies. She has lectured and published widely about sexuality and gender in and around digital media, contemporary arts, and media activism. She moved to Hong Kong in 2005 and devotes most of her research to contemporary Chinese, Japanese, and trans-Asian arts and media platforms. Jacobs has authored three books about Internet culture and sexuality. Her first book, Netporn: DIY Web Culture and Sexual Politics (2007), received critical claim among media scholars as a pioneering study of emerging web cultures that challenge government regulations and the aims of corporate expansionism. Her book People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet (2012) investigates mainland China’s immersion in new trends in sexually explicit media. Her most recent book, The Afterglow of Women’s Pornography in Post-Digital China (2015), focuses on feminist and queer media cultures of sexuality and activism that have defined Chinese gender controversies in the social media age. Her work can be found on http://www.katrienjacobs.com. Kang-Nguyễn Byung’chu Dredge is an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. He received his anthropology Ph.D. (2015) and global health MPH (2016) from Emory University. Broadly, Kang’s research focuses on race, gender, sexuality, class, and transnationalism. His primary interests include the anthropology of love, beauty, sex

Contributors281

work, sexual health, structural violence, and Hallyu (Korean Wave) studies. His geographic specialization is Southeast Asia (Thailand), with particular attention to inter-Asia and Asian diaspora connections. His current research explores how popular culture from Korea and Japan are being embodied in everyday Thai gender and sexual practices, including in boys love imagery, personification, and fandom. Hyojin Kim is an assistant professor at the Institute for Japanese Studies, Seoul National University, Korea. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2008. Her research interests include Japanese studies, gender/sexuality, and popular culture, especially otaku/fujoshi culture in Japan and Korea. She has published a number of journal articles, book chapters, and translations, including “Crossing Double Borders: Korean Female Amateur Comics Artists in the Globalization of Japanese Dojin Culture,” International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) 13, no. 2 (Fall 2011); “Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ōoku: Historical Imagination and the Potential of Japanese Women’s Manga,” Seoul Journal of Japanese Studies 2, no. 1 (2016); “‘Tasha’ toshite no yaoi: 1990-nendai ni okeru Kankoku dōjin bunka no hen’yō o megutte” (Yaoi as the Other: On the changes in Korean tongin culture in the 1990s), in Nikkan Manga Kenkyu, ed. Jaqueline Berndt, Yamanaka Chie, and Leem Hye Jeong (2013); and the Korean translation (2018) of Akiko Mizoguchi’s influential study BL shinkaron: Bōizurabu ga shakai o ugokasu (BL as a transformative genre: Boys’ love moves the world forward, 2015). Jungmin Kwon is an associate professor of digital culture and film studies in the School of Film at Portland State University. Her research and teaching interests include digital culture, film and media, gender and sexuality, the media industry, fans and audiences, media celebrity, and Korean/East Asian popular culture. She is the author of Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies (2019). Her work has been published in academic journals such as Television and New Media, International Journal of Communication, and Journal of Fandom Studies. Aerin Lai is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her Ph.D. project uses a postcolonial and intersectional lens to understand masculinities in Singapore. Besides gender and sexuality, she is also interested in corporeality and cultural heritage. She holds a Master of Social Science from the division of Gender and Social Sciences at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, where she wrote a thesis on how the masculinity of young men in Tokyo is produced through bodymaking practices. She contributed the chapter “A Study of the Fudanshi Identity in Singapore” to the Anthropology through the Experience of the Physical

282 Contributors

Body (forthcoming), which seeks to understand how fudanshi—male readers of boys love (BL)—make sense of heterosexuality and masculinity while consuming BL. Xi Lin is a professor of political philosophy and assistant dean of the Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences at Fudan University, associate editorin-chief of Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and a former member of Higher Education Academy (U.K.). He completed his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in 2007. His main research areas include theories of justice, phenomenology, and the tradition of equity and justice in imperial China. His publications include Emotions and Politics in Human Society: A Progressive Critique (Shin-Sung, 2012); a translation into English of Deng Zhenglai’s Rethinking Chinese Jurisprudence and Exploring Its Future: A Sociology of Knowledge Perspective (2014); and dozens of research papers. Lakshmi Menon is an assistant professor of English at VTM NSS College under the University of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram, India. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, with a thesis titled “Harry and Draco Sitting in a Tree: A Study of Harry Potter Slash Fan Fiction and Fan Communities on the Internet.” Her other research interests include digital humanities, young adult fiction, and queer literature, and she has published and presented a number of papers in the areas of gender relations and fan works. She hopes to extend her research on BL in India into an in-depth study of anime and manga fan cultures around South Asia. Kazumi Nagaike is a professor at the Institute for Global Education and Advanced Research at Oita University, Japan. She holds a Ph.D, from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Japanese Women Write Male-Male Erotica (2012) and coeditor of Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan (with Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker; 2015), Shōjo across Media: Exploring Popular Sites of “Girl” Discourse in Japan (with Jaqueline Berndt and Fusami Ogi; 2019), and Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond: Uniting Different Cultures and Identities (with Fusami Ogi, Rebecca Suter, and John Lent; 2019); “Boys’ Love Manga (yaoi),” special section in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 4, no. 1 (June 2013), with Dru Pagliassotti and Mark McHarry, and “Transnational Boys’ Love Fan Studies,” special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures 12 (2013), with Katsuhiko Suganuma. Nagaike has also published a wide range of journal articles, book chapters, and translations related to her ongoing analysis of gender/sexuality in Japanese literature and popular culture.

Contributors283

Asako Patricia Saito is an independent researcher with interests in grassroots cultural production and dissemination within East Asia, representations of history in contemporary popular culture, and cross-cultural flows between China, Japan, and Taiwan. For her Ph.D. thesis based on ethnographic interviews and textual analysis, Saito examined Chinese, Japanese, and Taiwanese dōjinshi based on the ancient Chinese epic Three Kingdoms. She has published her work in academic journals such as Cultural Studies Review and Asian Studies Review, as well as in several edited volumes on Asian popular cultures. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award (2013), the Asian Studies Association of Australia Postgraduate Award (2016), and the Taiwan Fellowship (2017). More information on Saito can be found on her website: http://www.asakopsaito.com. Kristine Michelle Santos is an assistant professor in the Department of History and the Japanese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University. Her research interrogates young women and their contributions to the development of transformative literacies and practices that challenge normative consumption of and expression of popular media. She also researches the transnational transmission and neoliberalization of these transformative literacies and practices across Southeast Asia. Her recent publications, “The Bitches of Boys Love Comics: The Pornographic Response of Japan’s Rotten Women,” in Porn Studies 7, no. 1 (2020), and “Disrupting Centers of Transcultural Materialities: The Transnationalization of Japan Cool through Philippine Fan Works,” in Mechademia: Second Arc 12, no. 1 (2019), highlight these transformative literacies and transnational impacts. As a cultural historian, she also researches gender, cultural studies, and popular and fan cultures in Asian history. Kania Arini Sukotjo is a lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore, where she teaches “Contextual Studies” and “Production Analysis” in the Putnam School of Film and Animation. She completed her Ph.D. in the Comparative Asia Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore in 2020. Her research interests revolve around fujoshi culture and fandom studies in Japan and Indonesia. During her Ph.D. candidature she conducted ethnographical fieldwork at Tokyo and Jakarta comicrelated events. Her Ph.D. thesis examines Tokyo and Jakarta comic events’ participatory culture to analyze how fan activities shape comic events and fans’ views on yaoi content. Peiti Wang is an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for General Education, at National Chiao Tung University and National Central University, Taiwan. She teaches anime/manga-related courses, including

284 Contributors

“Otakuology,” and “Anime/Manga Culture and Gender.” Wang completed her Ph.D. at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in 2010, with a dissertation entitled “Affective Otaku Labor: The Circulation and Modulation of Affect in the Anime Industry.” Her research interests include media and cultural studies, feminist theories and gender studies, and globalization. She is the chief editor of the book series Dong man shehuixue (Sociology of anime/manga), which includes Bie shuo de hao xiang hai you jiu (Don’t talk like you can still be saved; 2015), Ben ben de dan sheng (The birth of dōjinshi; 2016) and Tai man bu si (Taiwan comics never die; 2018). She also curated two Taiwanese comics exhibitions for Taiwan Comic Base in 2018 and 2019. Wei Wei is a professor of sociology at the School of Social Development at East China Normal University, China. He earned his Ph.D. at Loyola University, Chicago, in 2006. His research interests include gender and ­sexuality, urban studies, and social movements, with a focus on the LGBT communities in contemporary China. He is the author of Kudu zhongguo shehui: Chengshi kongjian, liuxing wenhua he shehui zhengche (Queering Chinese society: Urban space, popular culture, and social policy; 2015) and Gongkai: Dangdai chengdu tongzhi kongjian de xingcheng he bianqian (Going public: The production and transformation of queer spaces in contemporary Chengdu, China; 2012). Wei has also published widely in both English and Chinese peer-reviewed journals, including Culture, Health & Sexuality, Journal of Homosexuality, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Chinese Journal of Sociology. James Welker is a professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies at Kanagawa University in Yokohama, Japan. His research examines gender and sexuality in postwar and contemporary Japan, with an emphasis on the ­consumers and producers of queer media, the lesbian community, and radical feminism, as well as the globalization of Japanese popular culture. He is the author of Transfigurations: Redefining Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan (forthcoming). He is the editor of BL ga hiraku tobira: Hen’yō suru Ajia no sekushuariti to jendā (BL opening doors: Sexuality and gender transfigured in Asia; 2019) and “Queer(ing),” a special issue of the journal Mechademia: Second Arc 13, no. 1 (2020). He is also a coeditor of Rethinking Japanese Feminisms (with Julia C. Bullock and Ayako Kano; 2018); Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan (with Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, and Katsuhiko Suganuma; 2015); Queer Voices from Japan (with Mark McLelland and Katsuhiko Suganuma; 2007); and “Of Queer Import(s): Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia,” with Lucetta Kam, a special issue of Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context, no. 14 (2006).

Contributors285

Yanrui Xu is an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Ningbotech University, P. R. China. She is the author of Dangdai zhongguo nüxing zhuyi wenxue piping ershinian (Contemporary feminist literary criticism in China, 1980s–2000s; 2008); Meijie yu xingbie: Nüxing meili, nanzi qigai ji meijie xingbie biaoda (Media and gender: Femininity, masculinity, and the formulation of gender in media; 2014), and the coauthor of Dangdai zhongguo de wenhua piping (Cultural criticism in contemporary China, with Tao Dongfeng; 2006). She has published research in Chinese on women’s literature and queer culture. Xu is also a BL novelist and her stories have appeared in Chinese BL magazines and literature websites such as Jinjiang, Lucifer Club, and My Fresh Net. Ling Yang is an associate professor of Chinese at Xiamen University, P. R. China. She is the author of Zhuanxing shidai de yule kuanghuan: Chaonü fensi yu dazhong wenhua xiaofei (Entertaining the transitional era: Super girl fandom and the consumption of popular culture; 2012) and coeditor of multiple collected volumes, including Fensi wenhua duben (Fan cultures: A reader, with Tao Dongfeng; 2009); Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Cultures in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (with Maud Lavin and Jing Jamie Zhao; 2017); and Chinese Love Stories: The Politics of Intimacy in the Twenty-First Century (with Wanning Sun; 2019). Yang has published extensively on fan culture, Internet culture, young adult fiction, and cultural industries.

Index

Page numbers in boldface refer to illustrations. Addicted (Shangyin), 31, 33–34, 37–38, 87 Adoption, 187 age: age-based restrictions, 126, 128, 134–135, 169, 175; female fans (China), 63, 259; female fans (India), 216; female fans (Indonesia), 125, 143; female fans (Japan), 259; female fans (Singapore), 170; female fans (South Korea), 87, 93, 94; female fans (Taiwan), 259; female fans (Thailand), 183–184; female fans (the Philippines), 155; male fans, 45, 245, 259 AIDS. See HIV/AIDS Allison, Anne, 175–176 alternative universe (AU), 21 androgyny, 8, 154–155, 159, 160, 163, 185 Animate, 182–183 anime: BL (genre), 1, 4, 68, 70, 76; coupling/shipping of characters in, 5, 7, 21, 127, 129, 220, 248, 267; fandom in India, 211–213; as a path to BL, 125, 216, 221, 230. See also fan events Anime Festival Asia (AFA), 167, 172, 227 Anime Festival Asia Indonesia (AFAID), 140–141

Animestan, 212, 216 Antique Bakery (Seiyō kottō yōgashi ten), 274–275 Aoike, Yasuko, 182 Aoyama, Tomoko, 229 arrest and prosecution of BL writers, 64, 171–172, 187–188, 259 aspirational reading, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51 Australia, 227–228, 230, 231, 237–238 Azuma, Hiroki, 69 Bacon Smith, Camille, 126 Baidu, 59, 70 bara, 133. See also gei komi Baudinette, Thomas, 6, 198 Bauwens-Sugimoto, Jessica, 141 BDSM, 9, 21, 69, 74, 75, 132, 138 beautiful boy. See bishōnen Bieber, Justin, 237 bisexuals, 114, 116, 214, 218. See also LGBTQ bishōnen (beautiful boy), 24, 96, 97, 149, 191, 204, 229 BL (term). See boys love BL literacies, 129, 175, 228–229, 230, 232–233, 236, 238 BL dramas. See drama series BL fans (any gender). See fufu; fuzhong BL fans (female). See fujoshi BL fans (male). See fudanshi BL video games. See video games BLCDs. See drama CDs BLush Convention, 7, 237 boarding schools, 140, 150 bondage. See BDSM

287

288 Index Both–New Year, 201, 202 boys love (BL, bōizurabu; term), 1, 19, 92, 125, 149, 157, 197, 232. See also bara; danmei; gei komi; shōnen’ai; shota; tanbi; yaoi breasts, 70, 73, 172. See also gynecomastia Brezhnev, Leonid, 74 Britain. See United Kingdom Butler, Judith, 8, 176 Cardcaptor Sakura, 216, 220–221 Catholicism, 139–140, 155, 157 CCTV (China Central Television), 32, 57–58, 63 censorship: in Australia, 237; in China, 19, 31–32, 39, 57, 59, 167, 259–260; in India, 214; in Indonesia, 126, 130–131; in Japan, 126, 176; in Malaysia, 237–238; on social media, 69, 73–74, 75–76, 260; in the Philippines, 236–237; in Singapore, 167–168, 171–172, 174, 175, 176–177; in South Korea, 83, 84, 94; in Thailand, 182, 189. See also arrest and prosecution of BL writers; pornography; self-censorship Chang, Weijung, 47 Chiang, Feichi, 118 child pornography, 236–237. See also pornography; rorikon; shota Chin, Bertha, 230 China: BL’s effects on gender and sexuality in, 8, 10, 20, 27–28; BL’s effects on attitudes about LGBTQ issues in, 33–34, 39–40, 60; gay fans of BL in, 42–43, 48–49, 50–51; global circulation of BL and, 3, 5–6, 12–13, 19, 68–69, 169, 195, 273, 275; history and development of BL in, 5, 12, 20–23, 57 Chow, Yong-kan Alex, 70, 71–72 Chowkdhani, Ketaki, 214, 218 Christianity, 140, 155. See also Christians Christians, 94, 98, 150, 155, 172, 246. See also Christianity class. See social class

closet, the, 106n9, 113, 115, 117. See also coming out Cocome, 110, 113, 247 Comic Fiesta, 237 Comic Frontier. See Comifuro Comic Market. See Comiket Comic World (K’omigwŏltŭ), 83, 84, 95 Comifuro (Comic Frontier), 138, 140 Comiket (Comic Market, Komiketto, Komikku Maketto), 125–129, 132, 135 coming out, 55, 81, 110–111. See also closet, the Communist Party (China), 71, 75, 77 Confucianism, 22, 98, 139, 250, 258 Connell, R. W., 36 cons. See fan events conservatism, 9; in India, 211, 213–215, 218; in Indonesia, 135, 143, 147; in the Philippines, 154, 156, 159; in Singapore, 171–175, 176, 177; in South Korea, 93, 94–95, 98, 251– 252; in Taiwan, 111; in Thailand, 186, 198, 274 Cool Japan, 3, 212, 273 copyright, 83–84, 88, 182, 188, 201. See also fandubbing; fansubbing; licensing; piracy; scanlation cosplay, 1, 75, 84, 138, 172–173, 212, 227 counterpublics, 3, 118, 153 coupling: criticism of, 22–23, 37, 99–101; in danmei, 22–24, 26, 27, 35; fudanshi and, 47, 49, 246, 248, 249–250; gender binary and, 7–8, 36; Harry Potter and, 20; in Japanese BL, 22, 83, 229; in Korean BL, 83; meaning, 6, 95; reader identification and, 185; Sherlock and, 57; slash and, 22; use of CP as abbreviation for, 57, 58, 63. See also hugongwen; seme; shipping; uke cover dancing, 194, 195, 197–198, 199, 200, 201 Covid-19, 137n6, 274 CP. See coupling cross-dressing, 189, 249–250

Index289 đam mỹ, 5–6 danmei (term), 5–6, 19–20. See also boys love; hugongwen Daum, 85, 88 de Certeau, Michel, 235, 238 demographics. See age; educational attainment; ethnicity; occupation; social class DeviantArt, 168, 230 diasporic Asians, 230 diasporic Chinese, 5, 247 discrimination. See homophobia; misogyny; xenophobia divorce, 150 DLsite, 233 dōjin (term), 126, 128, 248 dōjinshi: the BL market and, 1; Comiket and, 126–127; communities, 246–247; genres of, 128–129; globalization of BL and, 5, 19, 92, 112, 169, 227, 262–267. See also doujin; tonginchi; tongren donginji. See tonginchi Donner, Henrike, 214 doujin, 128, 132, 141, 169, 227, 231, 233, 234. See also dōjinshi Doujin Market (Doujinma), 167 doujinshi. See doujin drama CDs, 1, 92, 138 drama series (BL), 4, 198, 248; Chinese, 31, 33–34, 87; Japanese, 275; Korean, 88–89, 197, 204–205; Thai, 6, 189, 191, 195, 198, 200, 203–205, 273–275. See also specific drama titles Dynasty Warriors, 257, 262–267, 265. See also Three Kingdoms Duara, Prasenjit, 260, 266 East Asia, 1, 39, 87, 195, 223, 258–260, 272. See also China; Hong Kong; Japan; South Korea; Taiwan educational attainment, 28, 59–60; of artists, 86; of female fans, 9, 30n27, 143, 144, 155–156, 201, 216; of male fans, 45, 49 ejaculation, 248 Etansel & Bekyunn, 142

ethnicity: artists, 170, 230; fans, 5, 43, 46, 170, 273 Europe, 26, 80, 147, 149 Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan, 32–33 events. See fan events Facebook: circulation of BL and, 238, 273; fans of Sherlock and, 57; Hong Kong fans and, 69–77, 249; Indian fans and, 212, 215, 221; Singaporean fans and, 169, 171; Taiwanese fans and, 110; Thai fans and, 201, 203 fan conventions. See fan events fan events, 7; in Australia, 237; in Hong Kong, 76; in India, 212, 216, 220; in Indonesia, 138, 140–141, 146, 149; in Malaysia, 237–238; in the Philippines, 156, 158, 236–237; in Singapore, 167–169, 171–173, 174–175, 177; in South Korea, 83, 95. See also specific events fan fiction, 5, 20–26, 57, 81, 86–87, 92, 94, 139, 153, 154, 267. See also Omegaverse; slash fan service, 198 fandubbing, 4. See also copyright; fansubbing; licensing; piracy; scanlation fanfic. See fan fiction fansubbing, 4, 154. See also copyright; fandubbing; licensing; piracy; scanlation Febriani, Erisca, 148 female BL fans. See fufu; fujo; fujoshi; funü; hujoshi; sao-wai femininity: BL fans and, 9, 61, 104, 156, 186; gay men and, 202–205; men and boys and, 64, 245, 253; seme characters and, 47, 158; uke characters and, 8, 24, 27, 47, 100, 185; women and girls and, 104. See also coupling; masculinity; shipping feminism: activism, 108, 118, 218; BL critiques of BL and, 11, 92–103; as feminist, 11, 12, 103, 105, 110, 118, 275; romance fiction and, 164; support of BL and, 11, 93

290 Index Fermin, Tricia Abigail Santos, 48, 141–143 Film (Thai pop star), 194 fin, 184, 186. See also moe 1st Shop of Coffee Prince, The (Keopi peurinseu 1-hojeom), 205 Fiske, John, 235 folktales, 263 Foucault, Michel, 172, 176 freedom of expression, 71, 105, 108, 156, 215, 235, 238, 260. See also censorship freedom of speech. See freedom of expression Freud, Sigmund, 245–246, 250 fudanshi, 8, 243–244; in Hong Kong, 246–248, 253–254; in Japan, 244–246, 253–254; shota and, 244, 246, 249–250, 252–253; in South Korea, 250–254. See also fujoshi; funan; hnum-wai fufu, 120n5. See also funü; fujoshi fuirutā. See rotten filters Fujimoto, Yukari, 7, 36, 162 fujo, 218. See also fujoshi fujoshi: meaning and origin, 1, 56, 127, 231; use outside Japan, 218, 230–232, 246. See also fudanshi; fufu; funü; fuzhong; hujoshi; sao-wai funan, 120n5, 247. See also fudanshi funü: meaning and origin, 10, 56, 61, 120n5; in the Sinosphere, 261; use in China, 44, 56; use in Hong Kong, 68; use in Taiwan, 10, 109. See also fujoshi; funan fuzhong, 120n5 Galbraith, Patrick W., 43, 56, 253, 260–262, 266 GamerGate, 102 gao-ji, 56, 58–65 gay boom, 207n15 gay comics. See bara, gei komi gay marriage. See same-sex marriage gay men: as consumers of BL, 10, 22–23, 42–51, 80, 110, 186–187, 197, 247, 275; as creators of BL, 133, 230; vs. depiction of BL

characters, 8–9, 55–56, 90, 94, 97–101, 113–114, 190, 197; vs. depiction of BL characters in danmei fiction, 33–38; vs. depiction of BL characters in fan art, 72–74; vs. depiction of BL characters in fan fiction, 149–150; vs. depiction of BL characters in Omegaverse fiction, 26; vs. depiction of BL characters in slash, 22–23; as exploited by representations in BL, 10, 11, 34, 55–56, 96, 99, 110, 219–220; media representation of, 58, 188–189; real gay couples as objects of fandom, 6, 195, 198–205. See also gei komi; homophobia, homosexuality; LGBTQ gaze, the: female, 7, 8, 60–63, 64; gay, 204; male, 7, 8, 61, 156 gei komi (gay comics), 46, 133, 232 gen (general audience; genre), 20 gender binary. See coupling; femininity; masculinity; shipping gender free, 48, 51, 185 gender norms. See femininity; masculinity genitalia, 70, 73–74, 75, 176, 177. See also penises Girls Generation, 201 GMMTV, 274–275 gong: in Chinese, 6, 20, 34–35, 259; in Korean, 83, 96. See also coupling; hugongwen; seme; shipping guilt, 24, 113, 115, 144, 214–215 Gupta, Alok, 215 Gwendolin (Kŭwendollin), 104 gynecomastia, 97, 98, 263, 264, 266 Halbwachs, Maurice, 173 Hallyu, 195, 196, 197–198. See also ting-kaoli Harry Potter, 20 hentai (genre), 135, 236 hermaphrodites. See intersex people het (heterosexual; genre), 20 heteronormativity: BL as a disruptor of, 2, 8–9, 11–12, 23, 26, 56, 60–63, 115–119, 156–165, 184–186, 190–

Index291 191, 217, 261–262; in China, 32, 41, 42–43, 48–49, 50, 51, 259; in Japan, 259; in Indonesia, 143, 145; in the Philippines, 46, 155–156, 237; in Singapore, 168, 175, 177; in South Korea, 251–252; in Taiwan, 111, 112, 259; in Thailand, 188, 190– 191, 196. See also heterosexuality; homophobia; sexuality (men); sexuality (women) heterosexuality: BL as an imitation of, 23, 26, 27, 35–36, 99, 220; of BL characters, 6, 8–9, 33–39, 185–186, 198, 199–200, 266–267; of female fans, 2, 100, 116, 184, 219, 243, 259, 273; of male fans, 8, 184, 197, 246–248, 250–254, 259. See also heteronormativity; homophobia; sexuality (men); sexuality (women) Hindi, 212, 214 Hinduism, 139, 221 HIV/AIDS, 32–33, 34, 149, 204 hnum-wai, 183–184. See also fudanshi; sao-wai Hollywood, 102 Homerun Ken, 182 homophobia, 36, 80; among BL fans, 118; in BL narratives, 34, 100–101; in China, 32, 48, 56, 60, 65, 259; in Indonesia, 130; in Malaysia, 237– 238; in the Philippines, 157–158; in South Korea, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 251–252; in Taiwan, 110, 111, 113, 118. See also homosexuality; LGBTQ homosexuality: as abnormal, 31–32, 52n1, 141, 163; BL and acceptance of, 114, 118, 190, 203, 205; BL as an introduction to, 9, 141, 144–145, 219–220; criminalization of, 52n1, 126, 130–131, 167–168, 189, 211, 215, 237; in film, 242n43; in film (Hong Kong), 255n17; in film (Korea), 80–81, 95, 98, 251; in film (Taiwan), 108; in film (Thailand), 190, 204; as a mental illness, 187; as taboo (China), 24, 31–32, 38, 43, 49, 63; as taboo (India), 211,

221; as taboo (Indonesia), 148, 150; as taboo (South Korea), 251–252; as taboo (Thailand), 189–190; as taboo (the Philippines), 157–158. See also bisexuals; censorship; gay men; homophobia; lesbians; LGBTQ homosociality: female, 61, 156, 218; male, 22, 58, 96, 102, 159, 238, 257. See also gao-ji; ji-qing; ji-you Honecker, Erich, 74 Hong Kong, 5, 11, 12, 39, 46, 58, 243, 273; male BL fans in, 8, 246–250, 253–254. See also Umbrella Movement hugongwen, 6, 8, 34–36 Huhoehaji ana (No Regret), 95 hujoshi, 11, 94. See also fujoshi; tonginnyŏ incest, 31, 37–38, 70, 232, 245, 250, 266 India, 9–10, 12–13, 118, 272, 275 Indian (ethnic category in Singapore), 170 Indonesia, 6, 7, 9, 13, 118, 169, 195, 196. See also Anime Festival of Asia Indonesia; Comifuro; kincirmainan; Mazjojo Instagram, 70, 76, 169, 204 intersex people, 14n6, 189 intertextuality, 33, 229, 232 ippanjin. See nonfans Iron Man, 24 Ishida, Hitoshi, 10, 34, 65n4, 207n15, 220 Ishida, Kimi, 127 Islam, 126, 130, 139–140, 145–146, 150. See also Muslims Italy, 114, 117 Jackson, Peter A., 196 Jacobs, Katrien, 23 Japan: BL’s effects on culture and society in, 9–11, 117, 228; consumption of Thai BL in, 273–275; as destination of foreign BL fans, 42–43, 48–51, 147; global circulation of BL and, 39, 44–46, 81–83, 168–169, 227–228, 257–259,

292 Index 262, 267; male BL fans in, 244–246, 247, 248, 253–254; as origin of BL, 1–2, 4–6, 19, 24, 51, 273–275; perceived as open to LGBTQ people, 43, 48–51, 146–148 Jenkins, Henry, 126, 127, 153, 159, 235 ji-qing, 59, 61, 62 ji-you, 59, 61–62 June (Japanese BL magazine), 244 Jung, Sun, 250–251 Junjo Romantica, 216 K-pop, 81, 94; Thai fans of, 194, 195– 198, 199, 200, 201. See also ting-kaoli KakaoPage, 88 kappuringu. See coupling kathoey, 189, 202–203, 204 katun-wai, 181, 184, 187, 190 kawaii, 197 Kill la Kill, 172–173 Kim, Jongeun, 83 Kim, Kyung Hyun, 251 kincirmainan, 149–150 King and the Clown, The (Wangŭi namcha), 80–81, 95 Komikon, 236, 237 Kong, Travis, 247 Konohara, Narise, 24 Korea. See South Korea Koreaboo, 197 Korean Wave. See Hallyu Korpanese culture, 6, 190, 195–196, 204 Kurihara, Chiyo, 101 Kŭwendollin (Gwendolin), 104 kyara, 229 lesbians, 116–117, 195, 197, 198, 218, 268n6. See also LGBTQ Leung, C. Y., 74 Leung, Kwok-hung, 72–73 Lezhin, 84–85, 88 LGBT (term), 13–14n6. See also LGBTQ LGBTQ: activism, 4, 10, 12, 73, 98, 151; BL fans, 259; community and issues, 272; community and issues (China), 32–35, 37, 39–40; community and issues (Hong Kong), 69–70, 73;

community and issues (India), 212, 215, 219, 223; community and issues (Indonesia), 130, 138–141, 143–146, 148–151; community and issues (Japan), 48, 55; community and issues (Singapore), 167–168, 172; community and issues (South Korea), 98; community and issues (Taiwan), 108–110, 113, 115–119; media, 2–3, 6, 198, 204; use of term, 13–14n6. See also bisexuals; gay men; homophobia; homosexuality; intersex people; lesbians; pansexuals; same-sex marriage; transgender people Li, Yundi, 57–58 licensing, 88, 181–183, 187–188, 190, 217, 273–274. See also copyright; fandubbing; fansubbing; piracy; scanlation light novels, 1, 232, 263 Liu, Qian, 57–58 LiveJournal, 168–169, 230 loli. See rorikon lolicon. See rorikon Love of Siam (Rak haeng Sayam), 190, 203 Mac an Ghaill, Mártín, 62 Macao, 39 Malaysia, 6, 39, 130. See also Comic Fiesta; PenguinFrontier male BL fans. See fudanshi; funan; hnum-wai manhua, 238 manhwa, 82, 83, 85, 92, 94, 197 market size (BL), 1, 80, 84–90, 182, 183, 188, 217 marriage, 102, 164, 173, 185, 214, 218, 266. See also same-sex marriage marriage equality. See same-sex marriage Martin, Fran, 43–44, 68–69, 108, 118, 148 masculinity: BL and criticism of, 156–165; female BL fans and, 104; gay men and, 182, 187, 189–190, 200, 202, 205; male BL fans and,

Index293 243–246, 250–254; in manga, 229; men and boys and, 35–37, 55, 60–65, 196, 247–248, 258; queerness and, 243, 247; seme characters and, 8, 24, 27, 47, 100, 158, 185–186; uke characters and, 158. See also coupling; femininity; shipping; soft masculinity; tom masturbation, 49, 53n13, 187 Mazjojo, 133, 133–134 McCracken, Ellen, 43 McLelland, Mark, 3, 56, 205 media regulation. See censorship Menon, Parvati, 221, 222 Metahujo, 95–96 #MeToo, 102 military: government, 94, 187, 196; mandatory service, 250; themes in BL, 25–26, 27, 35–39 misogyny: BL and, 93, 100–101, 103–104, 118, 157, 273; in Chinese society, 118; gay culture and, 97–99; in Korean society, 93, 106n13, 250 Mizoguchi, Akiko, 4, 10, 11, 100, 117, 275 Modleski, Tania, 164 moe, 56, 69, 184, 229. See also fin Morimoto, Lori, 230 Mort, Frank, 64 Mr. Osomatsu. See Osomatsu-san Mun, Chŏng, 83–84 Muñoz, José Esteban, 51 Muslims, 139, 145–146, 149–150, 221. See also Islam Nagaike, Kazumi, 218 Nagakubo, Yōko, 7, 107n22, 162 Naver, 85, 88 neta, 229 New Literacy Studies, 228 Nijūyo’nen-gumi (Year 24 Group), 157 No Regret (Huhoehaji ana), 95 nonfans, 111, 112–113, 128–129, 134–135, 157, 174 obscenity laws. See censorship occupation (fans), 28, 109, 155, 157, 160, 216

ōdō, 229 Okabe, Daisuke, 127 Okujima, Hiromasa, 274 Olympic Games, 59, 128 Omegaverse, 5, 25–26, 27, 272 one true pairing (OTP), 141 only events, 95 Osomatsu-san (Mr. Osomatsu), 129 otaku: in Japan, 1, 95, 246; in India, 213; in Indonesia, 129–130, 135, 138–139; in South Korea, 11, 95 otoko no ko, 249 OTPCon, 141 outsiders. See nonfans Ozaki, Minami, 82 Pagliassotti, Dru, 114, 117 pairing. See coupling; one true pairing; shipping pansexuals, 116, 214 Parameswaran, Radhika, 214–215 Park, Sejeong, 84, 89 Park, Sung-hee, 82, 85 PenguinFrontier, 6, 228, 230, 232–233, 234, 235, 236–238 penises, 98, 236. See also genitalia; phallus pesantren, 140, 150 phallus, the, 255n18 Philippines, 6, 8, 178n4, 195, 273; Filipino fans, 46, 48, 49, 141, 185, 196. See also BLush Convention; Komikon; WuMing, Scott Pink Dot, 168 piracy, 4–5, 82, 168–169, 181–183, 188, 212, 217, 273. See also copyright; fansubbing; licensing; scanlation Pirotess, 228, 230–232, 231, 235, 236–238 pixiv, 10, 169, 232, 274 plagiarism. See copyright Plurk, 110, 113–114, 115–116 police, 11, 75, 109, 171, 173, 175, 188. See also arrest and prosecution of BL writers; censorship; military pornography: BL as, 27, 64, 131, 172, 176, 182, 186, 188; content in BL, 49, 134, 248; at fan events, 134,

294 Index 237; gay, 42, 45–46; restrictions on, 6–7, 11, 25, 74, 126, 130; women as consumers of, 24, 156, 214, 218. See also censorship; child pornography; hentai; rorikon; shota postcolonial condition, 3, 178n4 Protestantism, 139, 246 PTT, 111, 112, 113 Puri, Jyoti, 214 Qilin, 35–39 R18, 134–135, 237. See also pornography Radway, Janice, 164 rape, 24, 93, 99, 104 Records of the Three Kingdoms. See Three Kingdoms religion. See Catholicism; Christianity; Christians; Hinduism; Islam; Muslims; Protestantism; shame; sin religious schools, 144, 155–156, 157 Road Movie, 95 Rofel, Lisa, 47 Romance of the Three Kingdoms. See Three Kingdoms Room801, 237 rori. See rorikon rorikon, 138, 245, 252, 253 rotten filters, 10, 56, 58, 260, 261–262, 265, 266 Roudometof, Victor, 236 Royal Boys Love Convention, 7, 130, 131, 138, 140 rub, 185. See also coupling; shipping; uke ruk, 185. See also coupling; seme; shipping sadomasochism. See BDSM Saint Seiya, 5, 112 Saitō, Tamaki, 245–246 same-sex marriage, 10, 11, 32, 73, 108–112, 114–115, 117–119 sao-wai, 183–184, 195, 197–198, 199–205. See also fujoshi scanlation, 4, 140, 154, 196, 217. See also copyright; licensing; piracy Scott, James C., 153–154 self-censorship, 172, 176, 177. See also closet, the; coming out

seme: meaning, 8, 35, 47, 54n21, 99; use of term overseas, 149, 246, 248, 249. See also gong; hugongwen; ruk; shipping Senda, Yuki, 253 settings: alternative universe (AU), 21; domestic, 139, 143, 146–149, 221, 222; foreign, 24, 146–149, 238; future, 25; historical, 95; military, 25–26, 35–39; school, 72–73, 150, 232, 233 sexual orientation. See bisexuals; gay men; heterosexuality; homosexuality; LGBTQ; lesbians; pansexuals sexuality (men), 2, 4, 61; in China, 31–32, 36, 41, 44, 49, 50, 51, 64; in Hong Kong, 70, 71, 73, 249–250, 253–254; in Japan, 246, 249, 253–254; in the Philippines, 157–158, 163–165; in South Korea, 251–252, 253–254; in Thailand, 190, 198. See also Freud, Sigmund; heteronormativity; heterosexuality; homosexuality; sexuality (women) sexuality (women), 2, 4, 61; in China, 28, 31–32, 44; in Hong Kong, 70, 71, 73; in India, 211–212, 218–220, 223; in Indonesia, 126, 129, 143; in Japan, 2, 46, 147; in the Philippines, 156, 163–165; in South Korea, 93, 98, 101, 106n9; in Taiwan, 44, 108–109, 112, 118–119; in Thailand, 184, 190, 198, 203. See also heteronormativity; heterosexuality; homosexuality; sexuality (men) shame: BL and, 24, 115, 129, 139, 275; sexuality and, 187, 189, 214–215 Shangyin. See Addicted Sherlock, 21–22, 25, 57 Shimura, Takako, 274 Shin sangoku musō. See Dynasty Warriors Shinjuku Ni-chōme, 42, 49–50 shipping: criticism of, 160–161; gender binary and, 159–165, 185–186, 220; in Indonesian BL, 149; meaning, 6, 198, 199, 200; variations on, 232–233,

Index295 234. See also coupling; hugongwen; one true pairing; seme; uke shōjo culture, 2 shōjo manga, 4, 5, 7, 52, 157, 183, 184, 229. See also sunjeong manhwa shōnen (genre), 5, 127, 129, 213, 217, 229. See also specific titles Shōnen Jump, 217 shōnen’ai: use by overseas fans, 19, 125, 197, 217; use of term in Japan, 7, 157, 207n15 shota, 243–246, 249–250, 252–253 shotacon. See shota shou, 6, 35. See also coupling; gong; seme; shipping; su; uke shounen-ai. See shōnen’ai Shum, Lester, 70, 71–72 sin, 9, 24, 125–126, 145–147. See also Catholicism; Christianity; Christians; conservatism, Hinduism; Islam; Muslims; Protestantism Singapore, 2, 7, 39, 130, 141, 260 Singapore Toy Games Comics Convention (STGCC), 167, 172 Sinnott, Megan, 207n10 slash, 5, 44, 153, 159, 237, 272. See also Omegaverse social class, 43; in China, 47; in India, 211, 212–213, 214, 216; in Indonesia, 9; in the Philippines, 8, 155–156 social media, 273, 275; in Hong Kong, 70–72, 76; in Indonesia, 131; in South Korea, 92–93, 98–99, 102; in Taiwan, 110; in Thailand, 197–198, 201, 204. See also specific social media platforms sodomy laws. See homosexuality: criminalization of soft masculinity, 158, 185–186, 190, 197, 200, 204 soft power, 3, 18, 274 soldiers. See military Sono yubi dake ga shitteiru, 217 South America, 6, 195 South Asia. See India South Korea: BL consumption in, 8; BL fiction authors in, 86–90; debates

over BL in, 8; feminist critiques of BL in, 11, 92–103; global circulation of BL and, 6, 19, 21, 39, 146, 195, 196, 275; history of BL in, 5, 80, 81–84, 92; male BL fans in, 8, 250– 254; online BL in, 84–90. See also Hallyu; K-pop; Koreaboo; Korpanese culture Southeast Asia, 1, 13, 195, 223; fan networks and, 39, 169, 172, 227, 230, 238, 272; religionbased morality in, 141–143, 213. See also Indonesia; Malaysia; Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; Vietnam Spring Festival Gala, 57–58, 63 stepbrothers, 38 stigma: of BL, 80, 110, 111, 156, 211, 259; of homosexuality, 60, 62, 110, 156, 251, 259 Storey, John, 164 su, 83, 96. See also coupling; gong; seme; shou; uke sunjeong manhwa, 95. See also shōjo manga Super Junior, 199 Supernatural, 25 Suzuki, Kazuko, 156–157 Sydney Anime and Manga Show (SMASH), 227 Taiwan: BL fans in, 10, 11, 44–45, 47, 72, 147, 150, 247; danmei in, 19, 35, 39, 273; gay pornographic websites and, 46; global circulation of BL and, 6, 68–69, 195, 247, 273; history of BL in, 4–5, 57, 68 Takahashi, Mako, 182 Tamagawa, Hiroaki, 127 tanbi, 5 Taobao.com, 169 Tekken, 232 Teo, Youyenn, 173 Thailand: BL fans in, 183–187, 196–198; fan terminology in, 183, 196–198; global circulation of BL and, 6, 169, 191, 195, 236, 273–275; history of BL in, 6, 181–183; Korean

296 Index popular culture in, 194–196; legality of BL in, 187–188; LGBTQ issues in, 34, 188–191, 198–205 The X Files, 21 Third Place (Sŏdŭp’ŭlleisŭ), 95 Three Kingdoms: controversies about, 261, 262; homosociality in, 257; transformations of, 257–258, 260–262, 267. See also Dynasty warriors TikTok, 260 ting-kaoli, 195, 197–198, 199–205 tom, 195, 205, 207n10 tonginchi, 5, 82, 83, 86, 93–94, 95 tonginnyŏ, 95 tongzhi, 109 tongren, 28n1. See also dōjinshi Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 10 transfiguration, 3, 51, 272–275 transgender people: in Indonesia, 140, 144, 145; in Japan, 9; in South Korea, 81, 98; in Taiwan, 116; in Thailand, 189, 195. See also kathoey; LGBTQ; Omegaverse; otoko no ko translation, 20, 22, 25, 39, 53n9, 273. See also copyright; fandubbing; fansubbing; licensing; piracy; scanlation Tsang, Jasper, 72–73 Tumblr, 57, 70, 74, 75–76, 168 TVMost, 73 TVXQ, 86 Twitter: circulation of BL and, 238, 273; fans of Sherlock and, 57; Hong Kong fans and, 70, 74, 75, 76; Indian fans and, 215; Korean fans and, 11, 92, 97, 99, 101, 105, 106, 107; Singaporean fans and, 169; use of in Amazing Thailand campaign, 274 2gether, 274–275 2.5-dimentional products, 116 uke: meaning, 8, 36, 47, 54n21, 99; use of term overseas, 149, 246, 248, 249. See also coupling; rub; seme; shipping; shou; su

Umbrella Movement, 11, 69, 71–72, 75, 76 United Kingdom, 21–22, 64 United States, 3, 21–22, 25, 26, 44, 117 video games, 1, 49, 53n9, 125, 128, 129; BL parodies of, 128, 230, 232, 264; BL-themed, 1, 133, 134, 267; pornographic content in, 135. See also Dynasty Warriors; GamerGate; Singapore Toy Games Comics Convention Vietnam, 5–6, 13, 19, 195, 196, 202 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 27 Wang, Leehom, 57–58 Wangŭi namcha (The King and the Clown), 80–81, 95 waria, 140 Warner, Michael, 3 Wattpad, 139, 143, 145, 148–150, 151 webtoons, 5, 81, 83, 84–86, 87–89 weeaboo, 197 Wei, John, 24 Weibo, 57, 70, 76 Welker, James, 26, 127, 198, 267 Williams, Alan, 19 Wilson, Anna, 229 women’s narratives, 101–103, 104 Wood, Andrea, 3, 153 WuMing, Scott, 228, 230, 232, 233, 235–237, 238 xenophobia, 42–43, 44, 50–51 Xi, Jinping, 74 Xinhua, 32 Xu, Yanrui, 3, 5, 39, 70, 169 Yamaai, Shikiko, 24 Yamakawa Jun’ichi, 232 Yang, Ling, 3, 5, 39, 70, 169 yaoi: debate, 99, 101; use as a global label for BL, 19; use in Australia, 227, 230, 231, 237; use in India, 217, 219; use in Indonesia, 125, 149; use in Japan, 5, 92, 244; use in Malaysia, 227, 230, 234, 237, 238; use in South Korea, 5, 82–83, 92, 96; use in Taiwan, 112; use

Index297 in Thailand, 181, 183, 195, 197, 201, 203; use in the Philippines, 154, 162, 227, 230, 232, 233 Year 24 Group (Nijūyo’nen-gumi), 157 Yi, Chŏng-ae, 82 Yi, Yŏng-hŭi, 83 Yore, Paul, 237 Yoshimoto, Taimatsu, 243, 244–245, 249, 253–254 Yoshinaga, Fumi, 101, 166n18, 274–275

Youth Protection Act (South Korea), 81, 82–83, 94 YouTube, 201, 273 Yu, Hachin, 83, 84 Yukikaze (Sentō yōsei yukikaze), 232 yuri (genre), 135, 138, 237 Yuri!!! on Ice, 70, 76 Zheng, Xiqing, 19 Žižek, Slavoj, 176