PAP1129 - Girls' Pleasure in Boys' Love: Yaoi Fandom as Women Empowerment

INTRODUCTION The history of technology evolution has always been permeated by fierce voices that denounced the mind control that they would cause. In this sort of criticisms were include mass communication and culture. Following this logic, consumers were not able to interpret and select the information, but absorbed everything that was delivered to them. I wish to present a phenomenon that demonstrates the existence of a culture of participation and the challenging and active role of women on it. Named Yaoi, from the Japanese, and meaning Boys Love, refers to a diverse range of entertainment productions, all centered in the theme of male homosexuality. Mostly created by women and for women, Yaoi can use already popular masculine figures, and transform them into gay figures, or can create their own characters. These sort of productions came not only from professionals but there is a whole fan culture surround it and around the world. Following the steps of the western partner Slash Fiction, women and girls manipulate what we can call "hegemonic masculinity role models. OBJECTIVES The purposes of my presentation are to explain the Yaoi fandom, their purposes and characteristics, always having in mind three main goals. The first is to demonstrate Yaoi as a possibility for women empowerment in mass media and gender manipulation. The second is to reveal that they are unable to really contradict the gender dichotomy. AT last, I would like to expose the different representations of boys and girls concerning Yaoi. METHODOLOGY My communication will be based specially on literature review. Theoretical articles, studies, and even fan pages will be taken into account. They will be compared to some of the conclusions that I have gathered during my master's thesis, namelly concerning the comparison of the attitudes of girls and boys facing Yaoi and male homosexual scenarios. CONCLUSIONS The power of Yaoi comes from the sexual, erotic and gendered manipulation of masculine characters and from the deeply participatory culture around it. Yet the couples are still organized according to the dual logic, that associates the dominant with the masculine and the submissive with the feminine. In this way, it seems difficult to escape gender and sex inequality. Although using femininity and submission connected to a man can be a possibility of breakdown from the bipolar perspective about gender and sex, when it is the only, or the mainly, standard for this couples, it works as a reinforcement of the association of the feminine with subordination, This is even more accurate considering that most of the stories and situations involve the coercion by the dominant partner so that the submissive one accepts the relationship and all his demands. At last, and as expected, boys do not accept lightly this kind of productions, while girls are more open to it. KEYWORDS: Yaoi, gender, sexuality, fandom, culture, Japan

Núria Augusta Venâncio Monteiro,

Licenciada em Sociologia, com o Mestrado obtido na mesma área de estudos, exerce funções de investigação no Sapo Labs, Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, da Universidade de Aveiro. Os interesses de investigação orientam-se para as esferas da construção do género e da sexualidade, assim como para qualquer domínio de índole (sub)cultural.