I am excited to announce the publication of a piece written together with my amazing friend and frequent collaborator, Dr Kristine M. Santos of Ateneo de Manila University, in Feminist Media Studies. The article is entitled Exploring debates over “boys love” media in the Philippines: from misogynistic backlash to queer emancipation.

Here is the abstract:

As a genre originally emerging from Japanese women’s popular culture and developing into a transnational phenomenon, debates over “Boys Love” (BL) media have increased in recent years. Within this article, we explore debates over BL through a case study of its reception in the Philippines, situating our analysis within the broader context of the Philippines’ heteropatriarchal culture. Drawing upon critical discourse analysis of traditional and new media discussions responding to the rise of BL fandom in the Philippines and qualitative interviews with 31 LGBTQ+ fans of BL, we reveal tensions between those who view BL positively and negatively. Through a feminist and reparative queer reading of our data, we contrast cisgender gay men’s dismissal of the genre as always already problematic due to its emergence from women’s culture with LGBTQ+ Philippine fans’ positioning of BL as an emancipatory media genre that combats homophobia. Ultimately, we argue that attempts by certain critics in the Philippines to downplay the queer emancipatory potentials of BL emerges from a misogynistic rejection of the contributions of women to Philippine queer culture. We conclude by calling for a more nuanced appreciation of BL’s queer interventions which recognises the genre’s deconstructive force.

This piece was a real passion project for both Kristine and I, spurred on to write it as we grew increasingly frustrated by the misogynistic tone we detected among various commentators in the Philippines who were discussing BL in the wake of the boom in the genre in mid-2020 (particularly in response to the broadcast of Gameboys, the series pictured above). We wrote this piece to call out misogyny among gay cisgender male commentators in the Philippines (and indeed around the world) who dismiss the queer potentials of BL since it is historically emergent from women’s media. We contrast such commentators’ misogynistic backlash and patriarchal control over what can be considered “authentic” queer media with the voices of Philippine BL fans who explicitly celebrate the genre’s queer emancipatory and political potentials.

Our article forms part of a broader scholarly endeavor to critique the virulent anti-BL discourse which circulates around the globe, supporting arguments concerning the dangers of authenticity politics and purity politics to BL’s queer potentials found in writing such as Sam Aburime’s. 

In the interests of opening up this debate to as wide an audience as possible, I have made the paywalled article available for free download via this link.