Thoughts while reading books about Ancient Yaoi
Don't mind me, just word vomiting. Now I'm reading more on the history of homoerotic literature in China and I really can't help linking them to my understanding on danmei written in the modern times. I'm becoming more certain that relationships in BL, especially classic BL are more based on the pre-modern model of male love, where homosexuality wasn't an orientation and homoerotic relationships were normatively ideal between an older man and a pubescent youth. The younger man, of which the modern uke/shou is modeled after is feminized but is thought of as distinct from women. Femininity isn't so much about womanhood but about sexual submission. This was the model of homoerotic relationships that would have been seen in many cultures including Ancient Greece, Ottoman Turkey, Feudal Japan and Imperial China before we entered the modern era. For the past 300 years understandings of sexuality shifted in the West, but it appears they didn't really in China up until the 20th century, after which there was a century of suppression, then China opened up to globalization.
How does all this contextualize danmei? Well a lot has been said that danmei isn't necessarily supposed to be LGBT media, at least not in the same way Western queer media is. The reality is danmei does draw from different influences including anime/manga, Western pop culture and Chinese classical literature among other things. My thought is that I would imagine it would be hard to completely discard the pre-modern understandings of male/male relationships in art, similar to gender roles. After all they have only been suppressed for a century. Which is a long time but relative to China's history, isn't that long. People are still bringing up "cut-sleeve" and that was so 2000 years ago man. That being said, nowadays there are distinct differences between modern danmei and homoerotic literature from back then:
Monogamous relationships are king. No more offering your wife to your bro in exchange for his ass sir.
LGBT identities are a thing. Western cultural hegemony for the win.
A more egalitarian model for relationships. At least compared to back then, age gap relationships with underage boys are not nearly as normalized. Really Bingqiu and Ranwan are a step up, they at least get together in their adulthood. Same goes for class status (at least couples with class differences won't automatically end tragically).
Related to number 3, the popularity of 年下 and tropes like shizunfucker. The overturning of power dynamics based on age and social ranking would have been anathema to the rich literati of back then.
No conclusion to draw here, but imagine how future scholars would view danmei now, and what that says about society.
The Libertine's Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China by Giovanni Vitiello
The Dragon's Whim: Ming and Qing Homoerotic Tales from "The Cut Sleeve" by Giovanni Vitiello
Was China Part of a Global Eighteenth-Century Homosexuality? by Matthew H. Sommer
The Daoist Art of the Bedchamber of Male Homosexuality in
Ming and Qing Literature by Wanrong Zhang
All interesting reads. The last one makes mention of the first recorded fujoshi (or I guess 腐女), who wrote the only complete novel on male homosexuality written by a woman in ancient China, "with 52 chapters and 1.8 million words" (MXTX got nothing on her good god).
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