Entry tags:

chinese, fandom, fanfiction, japanese, lj, lytdybr, theories, to-do

On the Attraction of Boys' Love and Androgyny
Originally posted @ IJ as part of Meta-Friday on March 20, 2008.

Disclaimer: This is my own observations on androgyny and the Japanese genre of Boys' Love.
I'm a Japanophile and have a few Japanese friends in rl, but I'm not Japanese. Just to let you know.
Wanky comments will be deleted =P

Plug at will. Am curious about what other people think.

---

This post originated as two comments in response to flyingskull’s comment on the Boys' Love genre.


Compared to Japan, the United States is a "moral" country. In Japan you can see businessmen ("salaryman") on the underground train reading hentai (pornographic) manga on rape, chan, etc. Even the shoujo manga (comicbook targeted to young girls) is quite smutty nowadays. In the United States, those smutty shoujo manga would earn at least an R rating.

What the Western world know as "yaoi" or "shounen-ai" is called "Boy's Love" ("Boisu Rabu") in Japan. This is Japanese schoolgirls and housewives' wank material naughty fantasy. Boys' Love is written by women for young girls and women. As such, realism is not a concern here.

A huge segment of the FanFiction.net population is influenced by Boys' Love. So if you want to claw your eyes out in horror as Draco in a pink apron cheerfully offers his "back virginity" to dominatrix uber-possessive Harry, now you know which cultural phenomenon to blame =P

Boys' Love ranges from the sweet toothachy kind to the violent kink-filled BDSM kind that you now and then have the utter luck misfortune to pick up.


Sweet Boys' Love (usually labeled "shounen-ai" by Western fans)

The sweet kind is highly unrealistic and portrays the bottom as, well, "the girl." Readers are not concerned about how gay sex works in real life; this is all about teh pretteh and fulfilling their romance quota. Consequently, there's no lubricant, no condom--a lot of times they don't even have penises. (Okay, they do, but it's often blurred out in sparkly bubbles)

That's why the leather crop-toting Harry can slide in and nullify Draco's "back virginity" in one sentence. Peppered with liberal application of "MINE" and "omgyours!" of course.

Boys' Love writers for the most part consider real gay culture irrelevant. They automatically assign the taller boy/man as "seme" (lit. "attack," the top). This is supposedly for aesthetic reasons. Perhaps it has something to do with how taller people exude more intimidation authority than shorter people.

There's been a movement toward realism in Boys' Love, sexual-practices-wise. However, ultimately the manga is there to make the female reader identify with the "uke" (lit. "receive," the bottom), who is almost always more feminine. About 90% of any Boys' Love you pick will be told from the bottom's point of view.

* To reiterate: Boys' Love refer to top and bottom as "seme" and "uke." The word "seme" is derived from the verb "semeru" which means "to attack." The word "uke" is derived from the verb "ukeru" which means "to receive." Trivia: the Japanese word for "receptionist" is "uketsuke."


Explicit Boys' Love (usually labeled "yaoi" by Western fans)

Then there's the ones filled with kinks that you've never even thought of (Yes, HP fandom, there are kinks that you have yet to encounter in fanfic, believe it or not). BDSM, orgies, public humiliation, bestiality, bloodplay, mindfuckery, tentacles, guro, insert-random-object-into-random-orifice, etc. etc.

This is basically hardcore NC-17 PWP filled with squicky kinks. Not much comment on that because I always stop reading whenever I get squicked.


The Attraction of Androgyny



*points to icon* Yes, that's a boy. A 20 y.o. young man, actually.

For some reason, girly boys and boyish girls are famous in Japan and Korea (okay okay in some other parts of Asia too, but not as much as in Japan and Korea). The girls do not necessarily want those androgynous boys to be their boyfriends, but they still squeal over them.

Ogling Looking at an androgynous person, you see both masculine and feminine aspects embodied in a single person. I find this blending of aspects intriguing, at least in a pop star/idol. I would not classify androgynous types as handsome or beautiful, but I do enjoy looking at them.

My sole theory on androgyny so far: the attraction of androgynous features has something to do with cuteness and children. You look at an androgynous person, and you see all these "would-be"s--all these potentials contained in that one body. To me it's like looking at a child and thinking, "She'll be very beautiful when she grows up, and all the boys will fall all over her." It's a wistful response to the fleetingness of youth. In your mind, you think, "In a year or so his voice would break, he'd grow pimples, and he wouldn't have those smooth rosy cheeks anymore."

venturous' comment @ IJ reminded me that this attraction to androgyny is by no means new.

Several Chinese gods are _both_ male and female. In one version, Mother Goddess Guan Yim started out as a fisherman. Once you achieve perfection/god status, you embody both male and female, yin and yang.

This blurring of gender lines have gone both ways for centuries (possibly millenia, I'm not that well-versed with Chinese history).
In Japan, there's Takarazuka (all-women theater troupe) and Kabuki (males playing both male and female roles). In China, there's all-male theater troupes and several instances where women play male roles. The most recent one was Madam White Snake, a TV series back in the early 1990s, where a woman plays the human husband of Madam White Snake.

There's something exciting in putting on the opposite gender role. It's like staring at your reflection as a make-up artist works magic on you. Day in and day out, you catch a glimpse in the mirror of what you might look like--and you look on with wonder as your eyes become more arresting, your lips more plump, your skin more lustrous...

It's rare for a girl/young woman to have both a tomboy-ish disposition and a boyish/coltish figure. I sit and walk like a guy, but I was never coltish so I couldn't ever pass as a guy. On the other hand, I know many young women with boyish figures who are very soft-spoken and "lady-like."
(When I was volunteering at the library, I did mistake one girl for a boy until her mother corrected me, to my embarrassment. In my defense, she's ten years old. After that incident, the next time I saw her she was wearing pink ^^;;)

/end rambling

---

Comments? Theories? =)

Next up (Sometime. When I get around to it.):
- "Why Slash Attracts Women--My History of Encounter with Slash"
- "Manga Art: the romanticizing of violence and Caucasian characters"