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Another BL piece from @ABSCBNNews that undermines women's queer engagement with BL by focusing on women's fetishisation of male bodies without really understanding how the queering of male bodies has been a resource of empowerment and not fetishisation. https://news.abs-cbn.com/life/02/14/21/more-than-kilig-bl-genre-needs-to-develop-further-to-address-bigger-lgbt-issues
One of the quotes from the resource speaker highlights how BL writers used men's bodies to find their ideal men. I can feel Taekmiya and Moto rolling their eyes. These hasty generalisations overlook the difficulties of women's expression in JP comics during the 1970s
It refuses to recognise the necessity to develop the queer bodies of the bishonen/seinen in order to break the narrative cycles of shoujo manga. These women capitalised on the mobilities of men to explore gender fluidity and sexual expression, one thing that heroines do not have
Why did they do that? Because women, especially young female creators did not have much agency to explore new narratives and styles. It took men the use of bishonen's bodies to even tackle issues of sexual violence.
Years down the line, these queer explorations opened the infinite potential of queer narratives in women's comics and literature in Japan (and by extension yaoi and shipping practices all over the globe)
It is these continued misrepresentations of BL creators as seen in this article that perpetuates the ongoing narrative of fetishisation. Please. It's 2021. There's fantastic research done on the emancipatory power of BL's queer explorations. There's even a book about it!
Here's the book, by the way. https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Love-Manga-Beyond-Community/dp/1496807766/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Boys+Love+Manga+and+Beyond&qid=1613369912&s=books&sr=1-1
To generally frame BL as formulaic also undermines some of the interesting development in the genre within and outside of Japan. Social class has been tackled in BL especially with many precarious leads. There are characters whose BL stories are rooted in their precarity.
It all falls on the selective reading where the resource speaker based his generalisations on what is accessible. NGL, Filipino fans rely on scans and even scans cannot catch up with some of the more diverse stories out there.
Not all fans can even afford @futekiya subscriptions where some of these interesting titles are only coming out THIS YEAR. Also, to frame that the contribution of Pinoy BL to the development of BL is its gay writers overlooks the contributions of many Filipina women who wrote BL
It has also overlooked the contributions of many queer writers all over the globe to the genre. We're not the first ones to have gay male writers involved in BL media. Also, the genre is no longer just for women or is designed for the female gaze. It hasn't been for decades.
What is also this unicorn they call the female gaze in BL? Please let me know because there must be something eff'd up if Naono Bohra and ERO BL is reality, which queers pr0n manga aesthetics and has been rooted on the male sexual gaze.
And I wrote about the queering of that male sexual gaze here: https://www.academia.edu/44338160/The_Bitches_of_Boys_Love_comics_the_Pornographic_Response_of_Japans_rotten_women
In sum, we can all be involved in this queer media and all contributions and engagements are valid. As shallow, as fantastic, as real, as intense, as affective as they are.
Hey @ABSCBNNews, I do hope you develop a more balanced piece on BL. One without the misinformation and underlying misogyny. I'd be happy to talk as one who actively researches on BL media.
