kittyclimpo<p>Reading that article about the <a href="https://blorbo.social/tags/danmei" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>danmei</span></a> authors arrests in hubei (and also a comment about bl by the author of heartstopper i saw recently), one random thing that really stopped me short was the description of danmei as being created mainly by and for straight women. I had fully forgotten that this is the general narrative (and is probably statistically true, idk?), because it really doesn’t tally at all with my personal experience of danmei <a href="https://blorbo.social/tags/fandom" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>fandom</span></a>.</p><p>While I would say that the vast majority of the people I follow/read/interact with are indeed afab, I don’t think that very many are cishet? Like, not a vanishingly tiny minority, but definitely a minority, definitely well below 50%.</p><p>So, in my personal, obviously curated and non-representative experience, danmei is definitely a queer space, beyond the gay ships (and I don’t mean that makes it unproblematic! That’s not at all what I’m getting at). And I just wonder why that is? Am I selecting a particular type of people/posts/fic because I am also queer? Are lgbtq people just more likely to be *active* in fandom, instead of just consumers of original danmei? Is the narrative about danmei being for cishet women not true anymore/not true in the west/was never true in the first place? Is it just a case of the usual “in the absence of actual facts, we’ll just default to assuming people are straight until absolutely proven otherwise”? Or of the usual, misogynistic assumptions about women’s sexuality?</p><p>Just to be clear, I don’t think that, if my experience turned out to be “true”, to be representative of the general facts and danmei fandom was overwhelmingly queer after all, that that would somehow be “better”! I am very fascinated by danmei as a form of expression by women in the context of the patriarchy. I think if it’s being read by straight people, that’s just as interesting as when it’s read by queer people, and whether those people in either case are women does remain kind of the most important part of the picture. But it’s not the whole picture.</p><p>Much to ponder. There must be academics working on these questions, if anybody knows of any articles on the topic, please do send recs!</p>