I really appreciate your breakdowns and I just throw this out there because you actively talk about consent in regards to subject matter about queer men (THANK YOU).
Would you talk a bit about the ubiquity of dubious consent and rape/sexual assault and/or harassment that occurs in BL? And perhaps (personal input here) how that ties into unhealthy and dangerous social and personal anxieties about queerness? Like queerness being inherently predatory, the conflation of pedophilia with (mostly) queer men, inability to express desire due to homophobia, maladaptive coping, agency, and autonomy?
Sorry I know that was a lot for one ask!
WHY SO MUCH DUB CON IN BL?
This is a great ask.
I have to say to start that while I side mention these kinds of topics a lot but I don't actively use this blog for queer commentary. I’m gonna make an exception, but I don’t want to turn this into a rant, so I’m going to try to be gentle and politic about everything.
Would you talk a bit about the ubiquity of dubious consent and rape/sexual assault and/or harassment that occurs in BL?
Here’s some scattered thoughts:
It's very prevalent in source yaoi.
It used to be in standard het romances 1990s and prior.
It’s still common in its benevolent sexism form in Kdramas in particular.
I have talked about it before in depth but I can’t remember where, sorry if this is a repeat for some of you.
Kdramas are gonna come up a lot because they are dictating general taste in romances right now, so Hallyu action is happening in this post, sorry not sorry
So BL is getting it from both narrative and cultural backgrounds. Also all of these notions are being bolstered by Hallyu romances, which are similarly sourced (manga, manwha, web comics, Japan early 90s).
Fantasies
Last I checked dubcon/noncon was still the world’s #1 sexual fantasy. Not sure if that is still as strong as it was, but from my experience within the kink community I’d say yes. (In kink the #1 fetish is feet but the #1 fantasy is rape. Yes, there’s a difference between a fantasy and a fetish, this is not that blog.)
How to unpack that?
I think the sexiness and appeal comes from the idea that your partner is so overwhelmed with lust for you, and only you, they can’t resist. Many people love the idea of being taken. THE IDEA OF IT. That’s what makes it a fantasy.
Seme/Uke (AGAIN)
In BL it remains popular and prevalent partly because of the seme/uke dynamic that imposes heterosexual dysmorphia on the players. I go into this a lot in conjunction with the blushing maiden trope.
It’s basically that the uke isn’t allowed by the narrative to want sex, he must be taken, because if he makes the choice, he’s dirty and impure. This ties back to the old standard of shaming women for sexual agency (the uke is acting the feminine in these narratives). Stuff like the madonna/whore complex.
However, removing seme/uke entirely can have an adverse effect.
If it’s enemies to lovers and the two are physically matched and less seme/uke as you see out of Taiwan, for example, or something like TharnType then the battle of wills becomes a battle of dominance. What in kink might be called rough play. Which is to say the point of the liaison is for one of the boys to come out on top and take what he wants. The fight itself is designed to be sexually exciting for the characters and the watchers. While this is fine in kink play it can read VERY poorly on screen.
Cultural Biases
All of this remains alive and well in BL narratives for many reasons.
Legal standing. The cultures producing these narratives do not have the same definition of statuary rape and consent as we/some international watchers might expect.
Victim blaming. The attitude is that If the sex is between 2 men, as a man the uke should be able to defend himself. If he didn’t fight the other dude off, then obviously he wanted it. (There is no concept of “he can’t” fight him off, maleness negates that possibility/thought process in highly patriarchal societies.)
The gayness itself is a loss of power. There’s also all this baggage around gay as taboo. If same sex activities are already considered culturally dirty, kinky, abnormal (whatever, sigh) then adding in stepbrothers, age gap, or rape doesn’t matter. It’s already liminal. In a way the characters themselves are “asking for it” by engaging with the very concept of gayness. This is another reason why owning gay as an identity is so comparatively rare in BL. It can be regarded as physically safer to say “I like men” or “I just like this one man.”
Admitting to being gay puts one in a socially and culturally weak position as a man, because you will be instantly associated with the feminine and that’s a lower status position. Quite apart from however that culture views gay masculinity as valid identity, as of this moment in time, dominant social status as MALE is always materially diminished in the eyes of society by gayness or gay activities. (Gay males who come out move from dominant into marginalized status.) Humans will rarely willing sacrifice social standing, it’s an anathema to the herd brain. If we can linguistically dodge this with a new term, phrase, or semantics, we will. This is one reason why there’s so much debate in the queer community around reclaiming slurs and the word “queer” in general. (Sorry, I got diverted by linguistic anth for a second there.)
Feminism & agency. Because one character is usually conflated with female (and also because gayness is conflated with the feminine in general), at least one of the BL characters will be fighting a feminist battle as a gay man. But because he is biologically male as a character, he isn’t recognized as needing the bolster or protection that feminist agency/advocacy can provide (even in those places where feminism and queer rights are active). This has to do with a basic conflation of biological sex characteristics - and associated physical manifestations - with gender, which is a social construct. (And is why trans identity is not just a feminist battle but an obligation of care and protection. TERFs are actually anti-feminism IMHO.)
You can see some of this play out with Noona romances, especially out of Japan and Korea. The female character is already acting abnormally by “dating down” so she is allowed to push social norms by being more romantically dominant as well. She’s already taken the step into taboo/dirtiness (and agency) by flirting with a younger man. Another way this manifests is in Korea’s fascination with women crossdressing as men in their historical dramas.
Pure fantasy. The fantasy of all these romances, including BL, is packaged in the abnormality of the romance existing at all. The special uniqueness of it as a pairing and as a romance all. It’s subversions as a fantastical narrative.
None of this is an excuse, just a sort of explanation, I guess?
(Here’s an excellent article on the history of consent in the western romance genre.)
How that ties into unhealthy and dangerous social and personal anxieties about queerness? (Like queerness being inherently predatory, the conflation of pedophilia with (mostly) queer men, inability to express desire due to homophobia, maladaptive coping, agency, and autonomy?)
Ah yes well, that would make this a much longer essay. And I’m already pushing things here.
But I think in part when you make a taboo identity a fantasy, then you convince those who are that identity that they themselves are also a fantasy. Some of their selfness is unrealistic, unmoored and unfounded. And therefore somehow more noble and less worthy at the same time.
Ah the complexities of the human spirit.
It’s not real if it only exists in a drama. This is the counter effect to the pro normalization stance I’ve talked about before. BL, while simultaneously making gay more acceptable for non-queers to digest, makes it harder for queer people to believe in themselves. BL is putting out this seme/uke, dominant/submissive, top/bottom notion of gayness, and choice within that gayness (as in: to be gay you must PICK your lane). Which is, by its very nature, unhealthy for a gay person because it has all these internalize notions of anti-feminist, victimization, heterosexual dysmorphia, lost agency, and gay = a fantasy and not a reality.
The BL fantasy forces gay men into a very specific kind of marginalized space:
if you’re sexually active and expressive about it you’re a whore,
so you become unable to express desire,
develop maladaptive coping strategies around sexual activities,
and lack agency and autonomy as a result
because you expect your partner to make these choices for you, including around desire.
Especially around desire.
Maybe this manifests as a rape fantasy.
(OMG did I just bring this blog post full circle? I think I did. It’s like I wrote a litcrit essay even when I didn’t wanna. How, meta: this essay itself is kinda my own dubcon.)
All of which is to say:
I fervently hope any female identified readers are spotting something VERY VERY familiar in those bullet points above. Because this is EXACTLY what is done to women ALL THE TIME. Especially straight women in patriarchal environments.
In the End
We all love seeing queer happy endings in BL. I love me a kindly coming out scene with the supportive friendship group. But most of us queers know, or fear, that it won’t be that way for us.
In a very strange way the positivity in BL, and the companion flaws of representation, are like the fantasy of romance in general. The idea that you will be loved, by one person, forever, is as much a fantasy as the idea that being gay is as easy, as one dimensional, as codified, and as lovely as most BLs show it to be (or ends up).
It’s complicated being a feminist who loves romances (particularly Kdramas!)
It’s complicated being a queer person who loves BL.
I don’t know that I have a pithy conclusion, except perhaps something I’ve harped on before.
Like the fact that is is possible to both be a feminist and cherish a rape fantasy (or even enact one in a safe sane & consensual way), it is possible to both love BL and recognize it’s many flaws.
The human brain can contain multitudes.
We are humans who exist in grey spaces (especially when trying to track down some BLs, heh heh).
More about how this can be handled better and well in this post on Takara & Amagi.
(source)
