It was my very great pleasure to visit Temple University on Monday, March 26, 2018 to attend a lecture entitled Boy’s Love, Yaoi and Yuri and Queer (But Not Necessarily LGBT) Media in Japan, by Dr. James Welker. 

It was great. James blazed through the early history of same-sex relationships as represented in art and literature in order to set the scene for the Year 24 Group and their work in “shounenai” (the term early BL creators used) and carefully made his way from same-sex relationships in manga from the mid-20th century to the present day.

I wasn’t familiar with all of his material, which was wonderful! I love when I get to find new tidbits of early Yuri to enjoy. And to this end, James made  a couple of really key points I wanted to share with you. He strongly hesitated to call anything the “first” because, when working with ephemeral media, someone will always find something older. ^_^

I took very general notes for the lecture, which you can follow on my Twitter thread. It wasn’t meant to be comprehensive, just some off-the-cuff tweeting as prompts, so don’t look for cohesion.

A main point of his was that shounenai was originally explicitly created to circumvent restrictive gender norms. James also focused on the tenuous relationship between LGBT representation and BL and Yuri. A  key takeaway was that these queer-but-not-LGBT media allow straight people to identify with either partner, since in a same-sex relationship, the gender roles might be similar, but aren’t the same. A straight reader can read BL or Yuri and find themselves identifying with either partner in a way that heterosexual gender norms won’t allow in straight media.

He noted that Sailor Moon was the first series that was parodied in doujinshi both by men and women, which I found fascinating. (By the early 2000s when I visited Comiket, most of the popular series had both male and female circles selling, but of course it makes sense that the shounen stuff has a lot of BL parodies. In the same way, I took it for granted that Sailor Moon had both straight and gay doujinshi.)

The audience was very receptive and number of the students were familiar with comic markets and BL fandom, which was nice.  I asked if he felt that there was something he’d like to see in BL, for instance, as I’d like to see the further overlapping of Yuri and lesbian, James replied that he’d like to see BL stay separated, in a sense, from gay comics, to allow it to remain a space for transgression in sexuality and gender, as it was originally in the 1970s. It’s a valid perspective and I had a long think about it (on my very long ride home.) 

Ultimately I came to the decision that I disagreed with him, not because I don’t think transgressive spaces are important, but because I believe sexual/gender “transgression” and “identification” without a sense of reality creates a fandom with less empathy, in a sense. Eroticization and fetishization of same-sex relationships doesn’t automatically include thinking of this in the context of real people and their lives.  When Yuri and BL were just getting their start in the USA, BL fandom was notoriously anti-gay. Their fantasy was pure, real gays people were gross. This is not a generalization, this is a thing I heard articulated by real people. This is also true for straight men who consume lesbian porn.  The enjoyment of lesbian or gay porn does not translate directly to support for either lesbians or gays. ^_^; 

But, as the LGBTQ community has made some inroads in BL and Yuri fandoms, I’ve seen a shift to more empathy for LGBTQ rights from those fandoms. It’s not that simple a correlation, of course, but I think it encourages me to always work towards seeing more lesbian representation in Yuri. I don’t think it takes away any space for gender or sexuality transgression for readers…more representation opens the possibilities for identification for readers on other spectrums, not just gay/straight and for the recognition of real humans with real-world representation needs. And, realistically, I see “Yuri” as an umbrella term that can accommodate both lesbian narrative and fantasy girls love.

We’ve had some further discussion on the point. James was not drawing a hard, clear line, and neither am I. This is more about the needs of fandom and further evolution of the genres the varying needs of their creators and audiences shifting over time.  In the bigger picture, I believe manga has plenty of space for both of these perspectives – and many others, as well!   ^_^ This was a great beginning to an ongoing conversation.

If you ever have a chance to hear James Welker lecture, I recommend it. It was a blast, and I’m glad I dragged my butt down to Philly to be there. I learned a lot. ^_^