User:Rachel Thorn/Sandbox 2

Here it is, "Sandbox 2". This is just for the Yaoi article! Matt Thorn (talk) 05:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Check text for accuracy. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Text of YAOI and Debate material
Theories and Debates

BL (shōnen-ai, yaoi) manga has received considerable critical attention, especially after translations of BL became commercially available outside of Japan in the 21st Century. Different critics and commentators have had very different views of BL. In 1983, Frederik L. Schodt observed that “aesthetically” depicted male-male homosexual relationships had become popular among female readers as an extension of bisexual themes already present in shōjo manga. Japanese critics have seen BL as allowing girls to distance sex from their own bodies, as allowing girls to avoid adult female sexuality while simultaneously creating greater fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality, and as rejecting “socially mandated” gender roles as a “first step toward feminism.” In more elaborate theorizing, Kazuko Suzuki sees BL manga emerging from girls' contempt and dislike for masculine heterosexism and from an effort to define "ideal relationships" among men.

Other commentators have suggested that more radical gender-political issues underlie BL. Shihomi Sakakibara (1998) argued that yaoi fans, including herself, were homosexually oriented female-to-male transsexuals. For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations" and James Welker described the bishōnen character as "queer", observing that manga critic Akiko Mizoguchi saw shōnen-ai as playing a role in how she herself had become a lesbian. Welker added that shōnen-ai liberates readers "not just from patriarchy, but from gender dualism and heteronormativity."

Some gay and lesbian commentators have criticized how gay identity is portrayed in BL, most notably in the yaoi ronsō or "yaoi debate" of 1992-1997. In May 1992, gay activist Masaki Satō criticized yaoi fans and artists in an open letter to the feminist zine (or minikomi in Japanese) Choisir. Satō said that yaoi failed to provide accurate information about gay men, promoted a destructive image of gay men as wealthy, handsome, and well-educated, ignored prejudice and discrimination against gay men in society, and co-opted gay men as masturbation fantasies. An extensive debate ensued, with yaoi fans and artists arguing that yaoi is entertainment for women, not education for gay men, and that yaoi characters are not meant to represent "real gay men." As internet resources for gay men developed in the 1990s, the yaoi debate waned but has had later echoes, for example when Mizoguchi in 2003 characterised stereotypes in modern BL as being "unrealistic and homophobic". In 1993 and 2004, Matt Thorn pointed to the complexity of these phenomena, and suggested that yaoi and slash fiction fans are discontented with “the standards of femininity to which they are expected to adhere and a social environment that does not validate or sympathize with that discontent.”

References