Exploring debates over “boys love” media in the Philippines: from misogynistic backlash to queer emancipation

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Boys love
• Philippines
• misogyny
• queer emancipation
• fandom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Biographies

Kristine Michelle L. SANTOS is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Japanese Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University, the Philippines. She is also currently Executive Director of the Ateneo Library for Women’s Writing. A cultural studies scholar and historian, her research examines women’s queer literacies which challenge norms in popular media. Her research follows the transnational flows and neo-liberalization of these literacies across Southeast Asia. She has published in such journals as Critical Arts, Mechademia, and Porn Studies, as well as numerous edited collections.

Thomas BAUDINETTE is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and International Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. A cultural anthropologist, his research focusses on queer media and its impacts on understandings of gender across East and Southeast Asia. His first book is Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (2021, University of Michigan Press). His second book is Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (2023, Bloomsbury).

Notes

1. All our interlocutors identified as cisgender. There were 15 gay men, 13 bisexual women, two lesbian women, one bisexual man, one bisexual woman, and one woman who identified as “questioning”.

2. We fully define and discuss the notion of kilig in a subsequent section.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristine Michelle L. Santos

Kristine Michelle L. Santos is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Japanese Studies Program in Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. A cultural studies scholar and historian, her research examines women’s queer literacies which challenge norms in popular media. She has published in such journals as Critical Arts, Mechademia, and Porn Studies, as well as numerous edited collections.

Thomas Baudinette

Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and International Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. A cultural anthropologist, his research focusses on queer media and its impacts on understandings of gender across East and Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (2023, Bloomsbury).