Global Fandom: Kristine Michelle L. Santos (The Philippines)

How does a girl from the Philippines come to understand, enjoy, and actively engage with Japan’s Boys Love (BL) culture? This was the question I was frequently asked in fan spaces that pushed me to unpack my fan experience and initiate my venture into critical research into popular culture.

 In the early 2000s, the Philippines experienced waves of media imports from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea. Japanese animation and Korean dramas were most accessible through local and cable television. Manga, on the other hand, was limited to those who could understand Japanese or Chinese or could afford the expensive English editions that were sold for the equivalent of almost twenty US dollars in local bookshops. The Philippines, at that time, was a challenging market for these imported media products as a larger part of our population would find it difficult to legally purchase these goods roughly costing a student’s monthly allowance. In comparison to Western media products that had long been integrated into the Philippine cultural economy, media goods from East Asia relied on informal networks of fans and migrant networks during those early years. This made products not only rare and potentially inaccessible, but also expensive for their young market. Hence, the previous question touches upon issues of access where, in a market where most consumers cannot afford such products, just how could a female student consume media from these countries? 

 The question felt increasingly loaded when one also took into consideration that the media which I enjoyed focussed upon male-male romances, the kind of romance that would be traditionally dismissed in a conservative country like the Philippines. Adding in the reality that I am also a young woman navigating BL, a complex queer media that explores romantic and sometimes sexual relationships between men. The fact that I am not Japanese made people question my ability to understand the nuances of a niche genre mostly produced in Japanese at that time. That fact that English was not my native language also complicated the way I communicated with fan communities that actively conversed in English. 

 While the question appears innocent, its constant reiteration during my interactions with other fans within the global community for anime and manga highlights prejudices that demean and undermine some fan practices. I turned towards various research on anime and manga culture in hopes of finding some validation for the fan practices I have embraced from Japanese BL fans, yet earlier studies focused on studying Anglophone fan discourse and culture or have analysed Asian fan practices outside of their local contexts. This disconnection became increasingly apparent as I witnessed the supposed utopia of fandom crack as old friends started discrediting Asian fan practices. Various articles, both academic and non-academic, were used to reinforce how some fan practices that Asian women enjoy were “wrong.” The invalidation of fan practices in Asia became my motivation to process the shame I was starting to feel as a BL fan. I redirected my wavering confidence towards researching answers to the questions I faced as a fan. 

 Using approaches from New Literacies Studies and perspectives from interdisciplinary Japanese cultural studies, I examined the media and communities of female fans who have been scrutinised for reimagining the homosocial relationships of male characters in mainstream Japanese media as BL. I specifically looked into fujoshi (rotten girl), a term for female BL fans in Japan, and how they used fan comics to queer male characters coming from the most popular boys’ comic magazine in Japan, Shōnen Jump. In studying the fifty-year history of BL culture for my PhD dissertation, I learned the nuanced and affective literacies developed within girls’ commercial and amateur comics and how these literacies were used by fans to transform and queer male characters in popular media. I have framed these literacies as “Boys Love literacies,” encompassing the layers of media literacy practices within BL culture and the importance of affect in queering media (Santos 2020). This research expanded my appreciation for BL as I witnessed how the shared literacies of fujoshi empowered these young women to explore sexual topics and develop creative techniques for sexual expression. My experiences resonated with many of the BL creators and fans I researched who found a safe space for sexual play and expression within BL media. I also found value in their BL literacies, a critical tool in understanding the emergence of BL fans in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. 

 While I was knee deep in comics for my PhD, BL became an emerging media genre all over Asia. The popularity of BL web novels in China (Yang and Xu 2016) and Thailand (Baudinette 2019), Korean BL webtoons (Kwon 2019), and the growing BL zine culture in the Philippines and Southeast Asia (Santos 2019) signify the transcultural power of BL literacies which are learned by BL consumers through affect. The growing interest in BL pushed media companies in the region to adapt local BL texts into television dramas and distribute them on online streaming platforms such as YouTube. With the rise of online streaming by the 2010s, BL became more accessible. In the Philippines, where internet providers have special data offers for YouTube and Facebook for less than the equivalent of one US dollar, BL media­­–specifically Thai BL soap operas like Lovesick (2014) and SOTUS (2016)(Baudinette 2020), became widespread. The popularity of Thai BL eventually inspired Pinoy BL dramas in 2020. 

The growth of BL in Asia affirmed my position as a BL fan in the Philippines. The power of BL lies in its transformative literacies that are used by its creators and fans alike to challenge conservative media landscapes. BL in Asia reflect how the genre has inspired women and other sexual minorities from different countries to experiment with narratives and sexualities. Increasingly, BL has become an avenue for creators in the region to define their own affective literacies and celebrate queer romances. I am currently fascinated by BL creators who borrow characters from various BL-coded media all over the region and situate them in local contexts. 

 FILO AU, a multimodal fan-produced content based on social media, is a kind of BL fan work that immerses BL-coded characters or idols, whether from anime, K-pop, or Thai BL, in a Philippine setting. The engineering students from Thai BL 2gether (2020) are transformed into basketball players from the most renowned rival college teams in the Philippines. K-pop idols from Seventeen become a Filipino “love team” who just nabbed the multi-million endorsement of a local fast-food chain because their love just got “real.” Sunday dates between cultivators from the Chinese BL drama The Untamed involve going to mass. In transforming these characters into Filipinos, their imagined fluid identities are woven into Philippine contexts, thus inspiring BL readers not only to reflect on the lived realities of sexual minorities but to also explore the queer potentials of local heteronormative spaces and practices. Since FILO AUs appeared in many fan communities since 2018, Filipino fans have become increasingly visible to English-speaking fans who are also able to enjoy these fan practices on their own terms. Filipino fan works such as FILO AUs diversify BL culture and the face of its fandom. Their presence breaks the myth of a monolithic, Anglophone, White fandom and open more spaces of fan expression. In acknowledging their play on BL literacies within Filipino contexts, we empower the creativity and queer imaginations of Filipino fans. 

 FILO AU and other emerging BL media across Asia reflect the decentralised flows of BL culture in the region. BL media from different countries in Asia are actively expanding BL literacies with lightning speed. Japan, which was once the centre of this media, are now trying to catch up to these developments. Japanese BL fans are embracing some of these new literacies as they also being to watch BL dramas from China and Thailand. The global distribution of Asian BL titles on platforms such as Netflix has made more people aware of this growing phenomenon. That said, the global growth of Asian BL has also made Asian BL fans more vulnerable to various prejudices.  

 The question confronting me at the start of my life as a fan about the legitimacy of my position and experiences persists in fandom and is more toxic than ever before. Social media platforms have made these microagressions more visible and pertinent in fandom. There is not a day where I do not see a thread that demeans fujoshi culture, undermines the complexities of Chinese BL, or silences the contribution of women in BL culture in the Philippines. In my research, I have witnessed various Southeast Asian artists who have received targeted hate for producing BL works; some even deliberately avoid writing BL altogether as online discourses have shamed their interest in the genre. Despite the wonderful advances in research in the last decade, to which I have been privileged to contribute, discrimination in fandom continues. As such, I remain highly driven to produce research that will uplift many Southeast Asian fans to show how that they are doing something truly revolutionary. Ultimately, I strongly insist through my academic publications and public outreach there is absolutely nothing “wrong” about enjoying BL. 

Works Cited: 

Baudinette, Thomas. 2019. “Lovesick, The Series: Adapting Japanese ‘Boys Love’ to Thailand and the Creation of a New Genre of Queer Media.” South East Asia Research 27 (2): 115–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/0967828X.2019.1627762.

———. 2020. “Creative Misreadings of ‘Thai BL’ by a Filipino Fan Community: Dislocating Knowledge Production in Transnational Queer Fandoms Through Aspirational Consumption.” Mechademia: Second Arc 13 (1): 101–18.

Kwon, Jungmin. 2019. Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies. Iowa City: University Of Iowa Press.

Santos, Kristine Michelle. 2019. “Disrupting Centers of Transcultural Materialities: The Transnationalization of Japan Cool through Philippine Fan Works.” Mechademia 12 (1): 96–117.

———. 2020. “Queer Affective Literacies: Examining ‘Rotten’ Women’s Literacies in Japan.” Critical Arts 34 (5): 72–86.

Yang, Ling, and Yanrui Xu. 2016. “‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’: The Fate of Chinese Danmei Communities in the 2014 Anti-Porn Campaign.” In The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Mark McLelland, 163–83. London; New York: Routledge.

Kristine Michelle SANTOS is the executive director of the Ateneo Library for Women's Writing and an assistant professor in the Department of History and the Japanese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University. As a cultural studies scholar and historian, her research examines women's queer transformative literacies that challenge norms in popular media. She also researches the transnational flows and neo-liberalization of these queer literacies across Southeast Asia. Her recent publications, "Queer Affective Literacies: Examining "Rotten" Women's Literacies in Japan" in Critical Arts (2020) and “The Bitches of Boys Love Comics: The Pornographic Response of Japan’s Rotten Women,” in Porn Studies (2020) highlight these queer transformative literacies and their transnational impacts.