— Dru

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
Special Issue on Boys’ Love Manga
Abstracts due by October 14, 2011

Guest Editors:

Mark McHarry, Independent Scholar
Kazumi Nagaike, Oita University, Japan
Dru Pagliassotti, California Lutheran University, USA

Boys’ love emerged in the late 1960s as women in Japan began creating commercial manga (comics) about young males in homoerotic relationships and self-publishing similarly-themed comics called dōjinshi using young male characters taken from popular shōnen (boys) manga. The stories show the characters trying to overcome obstacles in order to connect or bond romantically. The genre has gained popularity in many world regions. Beginning in the second half of the 1990s, boys’ love became popular in the West, where it is generally called yaoi, from the acronym of the tongue-in-cheek description “yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi,” or “no climax, no point, no meaning.”

Fans use the genre in subversive and oppositional ways, reading or creating boys’ love as a form of resistance and challenge to gender norms, such as the female-objectifying “male gaze,” and as expressions of ambivalence in relation to these norms. The latter, in particular, is shown in the recently recognized fact that a number of heterosexual males also create and consume BL narratives.

We seek to make this special issue inclusive of expressions of boys’ love and yaoi worldwide, multifaceted and interdisciplinary. We hope to reflect fan diversity, explore previously unexplored areas, and suggest ideas for future research.

We are seeking essays of 5,000 to 7,000 words.

Topics might include:

• The history of shōjo (girls’) comics in Japan as it influenced, framed, and grounded the development of the boys’ love genre;

• Current legal and censorship issues related to boys’ love, especially in the context of comic history, such as the recently enacted youth protection amendment in the Tokyo prefecture and the proposed Internet filtering in Australia;

• The practices and identities of fans who create and consume this genre, including fujoshi (female BL fans), fudanshi (self-identified heterosexual male fans), and otaku (all fans);

• The inception, growth, and marketing strategies of the publishing industries that include or are entirely dedicated to boys’ love comics, especially compared to those that publish gay comics or heterosexual adult comics;

• Concepts of “race” and ethnicity as they manifest in boys’ love and yaoi;

• Discursive analysis of media responses to the boys’ love/yaoi genre and to fans’ activities;

• Queer discourses within and about boys’ love and yaoi, such as their potential for a subsumption, by female boys’ love artists and writers, of gay/queer male discourses;

• Comparison of boys’ love and yaoi expressions in world regions;

• Reading strategies of fans;

• The distribution of boys’ love comics over new media, such as mobile phone novels, microblogs, and image boards such as 4chan;

• Copyright issues related to boys’ love, such as the ethics of making scanlations of untranslated works and the poaching in dōjinshi of commercially published characters;

• Artistic and iconographic developments and differences within the genre over time and between national cultures;

• Self-reflexivity within the comics as males read boys’ love comics for same-sex romantic or sexual “tips,” are supported by female boys’ love fans, or work within the manga publishing industry.

We are looking for articles from multiple disciplines and theoretical approaches. The primary focus would be manga (printed and electronic), but we would hope to include at least an overview of non-manga genres, too, to provide context and a sense of the genre’s scope.

Please submit abstracts of between 250-300 words no later than October 14, 2011 to editors@yaoiresearch.com

PDF call for papers: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cfp/rcomcfp.pdf

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=2150-4857&linktype=38

Listen to an MP3 of the show on the Subversities blog!

We would like to get together with other BL scholars, fans, and interested parties at Yaoi-Con on Friday, Oct. 29, probably at the hotel’s Knuckles bar (which allows in people under 21) — I’ll post more about it here later as we firm up the time. You are going, aren’t you?

But in the meantime, I have some bishies and betrayal on Uraboku to return to….

I’d love to talk to other BL or m/m romance researchers, writers, and/or fans! Or, heck, we can talk steampunk or horror, too … don’t hesitate to drop by and say hello!

The Edo-Tokyo museum is filled with artefacts, dioramas, and reconstructions from, yes, the Edo period to the 1940s. It was filled with school children and features reproduction fire standards to hold up, water-carrying pails to shoulder, palanquins and rickshaws to sit in, and buildings to walk through (shoeless, of course), as well as glass-covered displays. I took numerous photos of the printing technology and a replica trading ships; I’ll spare you the photos, since they’re mostly for my writerly reference.

After lunch at the museum we split up; most of the students headed to Asakusa and Akihabara (and then clubbing). Two headed off to Tokyo Disney and one came back tonight with over $600 of Stitch paraphernalia! Akiko and I, however, headed to Otome Road, colloquially nicknamed “Maiden Road,” the prime Tokyo destination for women who are fans of BL. We wandered in and out of various anime/manga/dojinshi stores; I picked up a dojinshi based on the manga I mentioned yesterday, but I haven’t opened it yet.

When our 4:35 reservation time arrived we headed to the Swallowtail Cafe. This is one of the very few butler cafes in the world; the more elegant of the two Akiko located online. No photos were allowed inside, unfortunately — it would ruin the mystery and atmosphere! However, my online Tokyo album shows the entrance.

At the bottom of the stairs and were greeted by a slender man in a swallowtailed black butler’s tuxedo who bade us wait. Then we were allowed inside an entry hall and waited a little longer outside what looked like a mansion door while we watched other women leaving, giggling wildly. At last we were ushered inside and greeted by handsome young men in tuxedos as though we were the owners of the mansion — “Welcome home, mademoiselle!” The interior was designed after an elegant English tea room, full of brass tea carts, delicate china teacups and saucers, crystal chandeliers, a great faux-baroque fireplace, lace curtains, and ornate furniture.

Most of the other guests were more elaborately dressed than we two tourists, many of the young women in lace-and-ruffle covered Lolita dresses. Akiko and I were led to our table in a quiet lace-curtained alcove flanked by “English library” leatherbound books. We chose a light Diane Rose tea and the Victoria platter — a scone and preserves and several finger sandwiches, with a platter of sweets for dessert — all served to us on pretty, floral Noritake china.

Although I didn’t understand the Japanese, Akiko translated as the stunningly bishonen head butler checked on us and our unfortunately less-amazingly BL-mangalike waiter described the food, the type of china we were using, and so forth. We were given a small bell with which to summon him, and he hovered nearby to dotingly refill our teacups or exchange our plates — one doesn’t do those sorts of things oneself when one is the mademoiselle of the mansion, after all!

Our waiter seemed tickled to be serving two Californian teachers and asked us a lot of questions, probably breaking his role to do so in a way he wouldn’t with local guests. Few foreigners visit the cafe; after all, only manga fans — and probably only BL fans, really — would know to go looking for a butler cafe. Not that there was any BL going on between the waiters to watch, it was all very formal and proper.

At any rate, guests only get 80 minutes to enjoy their food — no extensions! — so we had to leave sooner than we would have had we been given more time. We were escorted out again by the waiter and head butler, who carried our bags until draping them over our shoulders at the door, sending us off as the Japanese do, both bidding us come back “home” again soon as they opened the door to let out out into the “front hall” once more.

The experience was a little pricey — and we chose the relatively inexpensive ¥3,200 tea!　— but my attitude over years of traveling has become “enjoy unique local experiences and don’t worry about the money.” After all, when will I be back in Tokyo again, or find a butler bar in any other country? Nobody blinks at the thought of men wanting to be served liquor by beautiful women, but the thought of women wanting to be served tea or wine by handsome men just isn’t in most cultures’ social vocabulary! I regret that I don’t speak Japanese, though, so I couldn’t appreciate all of the details.

Since our reservations had been late afternoon — the cafe books up early and quickly — our initial plan had been to grab a few drinks afterward. However, we were so full of sweets that we ended up not bothering, instead walking around Akihabara’s “electric town” so I could see all the neon signs lit up before heading back to the hotel.

The article is about how library cuts may adversely affect the library’s manga collection. Too bad. I know that many people don’t consider reading “comic books” to be reading, but I believe that anything that gets kids interested in following written narratives is a Good Thing. I know from my own experience that learning how to read manga as an adult was as challenging in its own way as learning how to read a book as a kid, and manga’s stories are quite often morally, emotionally, and culturally complex.

Speaking of culturally complex … I’m off to Japan tomorrow morning and will be there until June 10. I’ll be posting about the trip on this blog whenever I get the chance! Hope you don’t mind a little personal travel narrative for a change of pace….

(Photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

The official publication launch is August 2010, but I understand you can buy it now through Amazon.Com (although it’s listed as temporarily out of stock as of this posting); you can also order it directly from the publisher, McFarland & Company. Review copies must be obtained directly from McFarland — in the U.S., call 1-800-253-2187 for more information. I wasn’t given any extra copies to send out to reviewers, sorry!

The book is a 272-page trade paperback with the hottest cover (cheers, Heise!) I’ve ever seen on an academic publication. It also contains panels and cover art from Winter Demon 4, Crushing Love, Only the Ring Finger Knows, Spell, and My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor, not to mention some great fan/doujinshi art. Which, I think, means it also has the hottest figures ever seen in an academic publication.

I’m really pleased with Boys’ Love Manga. My co-editors and the thirteen contributing authors put in an immense amount of time writing, editing, and proofing the copy — thanks a million, and congratulations to every one of you! I sincerely hope the book will promote the boys’ love genre, advance the academic study of manga and its readers, and, most of all, encourage spirited discussion with and between BL fans, artists, and scholars.

Finally, McFarland tells me they’ll have copies available at Yaoi-Con this year, and since I’m going, I’ll be happy to meet with you all there to talk about it, answer questions, and perhaps even enjoy some friendly debate over a few drinks in the hotel bar!

The Skin Tight party — in which the costumes range from the familiar (like Spider-Man) to ones that only a comics geek would recognize (like the 1993 version of Superboy) — is one way that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender comic book fans are expressing themselves today. They are coming out, loud and proud, in blogs, peer groups, Web comics and more, simultaneously pronouncing their sexual identity and their devotion to comic books. But it wasn’t that long ago that the environment was less than welcoming for those who wanted to make the two seemingly disparate worlds one.

Those who didn’t grow up as superhero fans and/or students of the queer in popular culture may not realize that there has been a longtime gay/lesbian subculture of interest in those men and women in tights. Recognition of this interest occurred as early as 1954, when Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, a diatribe against comic books that led to a Congressional inquiry and the establishment of the Comics Code Authority.

“Comic books stimulate children sexually. That is an elementary fact of my research,” he argued on p. 175.  Then, later, “The muscular male supertype, whose primary sex characteristics are usually well emphasized, is in the setting of certain stories the object of homoerotic sexual curiosity and stimulation.” (p. 188).

Batman and Robin were called out, specifically, as a problematic case of pederasty in comics.

At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce Wayne and “Dick” Grayson. Bruce Wayne is described as a “socialite” and the official relationship is that Dick is Bruce’s ward. They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace, the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: “Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend’s arm. [...]

Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident. (p. 191)

Needless to say, reading Seduction of the Innocent is an exercise in campy fun nowadays — “good heavens, beautiful flowers in large vases! Your honor, I rest my case.”  Go ahead and read Seduction yourself, especially Chapter 7.  Some parts are pretty amusing; other parts will make you glad that some of comics’ worst offenses (especially violence against women) were reined in.

Of course, Wertham was absolutely right in his suspicions. Only the most naive of readers could possibly miss the Batman and Robin subtext. (Their relationship, as a side note, was inspired by Sherlock Holmes and Watson, another couple often given a queer reading — a Holmes/Watson comic with canonical text can be found here). And the rest of those early male superheroes were much the same. Although they hadn’t settled down into Bruce and Dick’s comfortable companionship, they nevertheless ran around in skin-tight suits doing manly things with other men and hiding their true selves from the women in their lives — none of whom they married, at least no longer than a hallucinatory or alternate-world sequence.

Wonder Woman, Wertham helpfully pointed out, served as a role model for lesbians.

Where Batman is anti-feminine, the attractive Wonder Woman and her counterparts are definitely anti-masculine. Wonder Woman has her own female following. They are all continuously being threatened, captured, almost put to death. There is a great deal of mutual rescuing, the same type of rescue fantasies as in Batman. Her followers are the “Holliday girls,” i.e. the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls. Wonder Woman refers to them as “my girls.” (p. 193)

Wertham could be dismissed as reactionary, but in fact we know from anecdotes both published and spoken that some members of the GLBT community were inspired and aroused by superheroes as children. For example,

Novelist and art critic David Galloway (1987) testifies that, contemplating Warhol’s painting, he was transported back to adolescent erotic fantasies inspired by Superman comics — fantasies in which he recognized the emergence of his own homosexuality. He recalls “lying in the grass imag[ing] Superman’s pulsing thighs hovering over me. The forbidden world of comics thus acquired a fresh, engrossing dimension of Taboo. Batman and Robin suggested nimble variations on the theme, but Superman remained my own tender, indigo-haired ravager” (quoted in Collins & Cowart, p. 115)

Edward H. Sewell Jr.’s chapter “Queer Characters in Comic Strips” provides a history of the comic-strip recognition of homosexuality. He notes that a (coded) gay male character was introduced in 1936, and a lesbian in 1939, in Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, but it wasn’t until 1976 that an openly gay male character appeared in a comic strip — Andy Lippincott in Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury.

But those are hardly comic-book superheroes. What about those daring young men and women in tights? When did they come out of the closet as well as out of of the phone booth?

The 1960s included some parodic gay and lesbian heroes, but the mainstream comic industry in America waited until the late 1980s and 1990s to feature openly gay or lesbian characters, starting with extras and walk-ons and moving into supporting characters. Marvel’s Northstar was one of the first major superheroes to come out as gay, in 1992, the same year the British comic 2000 AD introduced muscular gay exorcist-priest Devilin Waugh, who was consciously created as a foil for Judge Dredd.

Since then, a number of other openly gay superheroes have been created, several of them appearing in X-Men, a series that has always been read as a metaphor for various oppressed or repressed subcultural groups. (Of interest, in the backstory for Colossus, who is gay in the Ultimate X-Men spinoff, we see him keeping a much-creased Captain America poster under his bed — perhaps he hid it because he grew up in Russia, but….). And an established, living-together gay superhero couple, Apollo and Midnighter, is featured in The Authority.

By contrast, relatively few superheroes have come out as lesbian. However, the 2006 lesbian incarnation of Batwoman makes her as the most mainstream, well-known LBGT superhero — Batwoman, after all, has been around in one persona or another since 1956. There’s still no comparably vintage, openly gay male superhero yet.

At least, not outside the Stonewall Inn.

References:

Collins, Bradford R. & Coward, David (1996). Through the Looking Glass: Reading Warhol’s Superman. American Imago 53.2, 107-137. Quote originally from Galloway, David. 1987. “Pop Goes the Hero.” In Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend. Edited by Dennis Dooley and Gary D. Engle. Cleveland: Octavia. 116-22.

Sewell Jr., Edward H. (2001) Queer Characters in Comic Strips. In Matthew P. McAllister, Edward H. Sewell, Jr., and Ian Gordon (Eds.), Comics & Ideology. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 251-274.

Wertham, Frederic. (1972 [originally printed 1954]). Seduction of the Innocent. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press.

More Reading:

A useful list of “Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Super-Heroes” can be found online courtesy of Beek’s Book; it includes both mainstream and indie comics.

Comic-book panels shamelessly ripped off of Superdickery, a site guaranteed to keep you hooked for hours.

Good timing, though — yesterday afternoon I mailed off the proofs for the Boys’ Love Manga book, after my co-editors and I painstakingly pieced together the index. (Note to self: never engage in another project that requires manual indexing.) And tonight is the midterm exam for the Japan travel course I’m auditing, so I can bail out and work on Agreement, instead. Ah, the  joys of being a professor instead of a student! More meetings, but no exams.

Glocal Polemics of ‘BL’ (Boys Love):
Production, Circulation, and  Censorship
(download pdf for this call)

Place: Oita University (Japan, Oita city near Fukuoka)
Date: 22nd & 23rd January 2011

The genre of male homosexual narratives written by and for women, commonly called ‘BL’ (Boys’ Love), has recently been acknowledged as a significant component of Japanese popular culture by Japanese and non- Japanese scholars alike. This workshop investigates the different ways in which BL genres, aesthetics and styles have been taken up, deployed and transformed by female fans transnationally. The way in which Japanese products, styles and images are received in different cultures as well as the (sub)cultural ends to which they are deployed will be investigated, as will the impact of the fandom on the changing nature of consumerism, participatory fan culture and particularly gender in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

In particular the workshop will focus on:

• Censorship, as exemplified by anti-BL discourses in areas as diverse as Japan, China, Canada, the US, and Australia

• The problematic representation of ‘gay men’ in female-oriented sexual fantasies

• Social and media responses to BL and its female fans (e.g. the over- popularised concept of fujoshi)

• Local ethnographies of BL production, distribution and use

• The integration of research on BL subcultures into a wider discussion of social theory, discourses, and globalisation.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Dr. Mark McLelland (University of Wollongong):
Mark McLelland is Associate Professor in the Sociology program at the University of Wollongong and was the 2007/08 Toyota Visiting Professor of Japanese at the University of Michigan. He is well known for his work on sexual minority history and culture in Japan and has recently published on problematic social and legal issues occasioned by the spread of BL and other sexualized manga and anime genres to Australia and the West.

Dr. Kazumi Nagaike (Oita University):
Kazumi Nagaike is an Associate Professor at the Center for International Education and Research at Oita University, Japan. She has published articles on female acts of fantasising male-male eroticism, both in literary works and in popular culture. Her most recent research interest is the semiotic analysis of male homosexual bodies, as represented in live-action BL films for female audiences.

Confirmed discussant:

Professor Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong):
Professor Vera Mackie is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Well known for her pioneering work into feminist history in Japan, Vera’s current research focuses on Human Rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

Please submit a 250-word abstract, a short C.V. and a statement outlining what you hope to gain from the workshop and how it articulates with your research plans to Dr. Kazumi Nagaike (nagaike [@] cc.oita-u.ac.jp) and Dr. Katsuhiko Suganuma (suganuma [@] cc.oita-u.ac.jp) by 30 June 2010.

Registration at the event is free. A limited number of partial bursaries covering accommodation at the event will be available.

Selected papers from this workshop will be considered for publication in an edited volume or a themed journal issue.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. Each presenter is expected to submit their workshop papers for circulation among the participants by the end of November 2010.

This event is sponsored by the Center for International Education and Research at Oita University and The Centre for Asia-Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS) at the University of Wollongong.

(Dru’s note: I’m going to submit something! I was at the 2008 BL workshop at the University of Wollongong, which turned into a special journal issue on anime and manga, with an emphasis on BL. It was fascinating getting an international perspective on BL in a small, focused series of presentations. If you’re studying in this field, these workshops are an invaluable way to meet fellow scholars around the world!)

I started thinking about this issue yesterday, when I was told that metropolitan Tokyo is considering an amendment to its child welfare ordinance that would define child pornography “to include sexually provocative, ‘visual depictions’ of characters who sound or appear to be younger than 18 years old” — that is, virtual child pornography.

Anime and manga artist Yoshitobe ABe’s criticism of the Tokyo bill has been translated and posted at Datacomp. He ends his comments with, “Humankind has been entrusted with much power, but if we abuse that power to do away with things that we do not like, then thinking in that way, we will give birth to this sterilized room kind of society. The purpose of freedom of speech, in my opinion, is to defend against precisely that sort of thing.”

Virtual child pornography is also included, problematically, in the new Australian internet-filter legislation that researcher Mark McLelland analyzes and criticizes in his guest post to Henry Jenkin’s blog Aca/Fan.

Are these writers trying to defend virtual child pornography? Not per se. The issue they’re addressing is larger and more complicated than that.

Some time ago author and artist Neil Gaiman asked “why defend freedom of icky speech?” with regard to the Christopher Handley case; Handley was recently sentenced to six months in a federal prison for “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children” in manga. Gaiman pointed out, “If you accept — and I do — that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said.”

Or, as the French author, humanist, and philosopher Voltaire once wrote in a letter to M. le Riche: “Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”

So it’s not about defending child pornography, which harms minors and thus deserves to be banned. And it’s not particularly about defending virtual child pornography, which, the U.S. argues, doesn’t harm minors, but is certainly considered “icky” by most. It’s about defending individuals’ literary and artistic freedom of expression. Because once lawmakers begin to prosecute fictive representations, society will find itself upon the proverbial slippery slope, facing the strong possibility that limiting speech will become less a matter of protecting the safety of living and breathing individuals than of protecting various authorities’ political interests … which is precisely the sort of government infringement on individual rights that the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights was written to avoid.

All of which brings me to my post about the controversy surrounding the term “VictOrientalism” and the problem with using a term, or writing within a genre, that appreciatively references a long history of imperialist and racist attitudes. The Gatehouse‘s essay “In Defense of Victorientalism” argues that one shouldn’t be offended by the term “[b]ecause steampunk is fiction, not research.”  The assumption seems to be that fiction can’t be offensive.

On the contrary, fiction can most certainly be offensive; all we have to do is look at the history of censorship to acknowledge how often fiction has offended others. And when fiction is offensive, it’s the responsibility of those who are offended by it to object and point out why they find it offensive. Because, as has been pointed out many times in the past, silence = consent.

So if you think virtual child porn poses a threat to children, or if you think VictOrientalism perpetuates racist discourse, by all means, object.

But objecting isn’t the same thing as censoring. Nobody in the VictOrientalist debate tried to shut down Issue 11 of The Gatehouse, no matter how much they objected to its theme. On the contrary, for the most part the disagreements between various viewpoints were polite, respectful, and thought-provoking. And, in general, the same has been true for discussions about legislation protecting or banning virtual child pornography — different countries may hold different policies toward it, but that’s their right, just as it’s the right of citizens within those countries to voice their objections to those attitudes.

I find virtual child pornography highly distasteful, just as I do virtual violence toward women. I believe the world would be greatly improved if everyone agreed to stop propagating such material in stories, novels, songs, video games, and comics. However, at the same time I believe that criminalizing any of them would open up the door to criminalizing types of speech that I don’t find offensive … such as the genre I research, male/male romance manga and novels. And I wouldn’t like that at all.

Criticism plays an important part in intellectual growth and development by propagating a diversity of opinions and perspectives. By contrast, criminalization puts intellectual growth and development at risk by restricting that same diversity.  Yes, there are good, humanitarian reasons for putting some limits on human expression, but censorship and criminalization should always be a society’s last choice, after all other alternatives have been considered and rejected.

Related Reading:

Asahi Shimbun’s article on the ordinance (in English)