Male and female idols of the Chinese pornospherecondemning her. This incident shows once again that there is a paradoxical mindset supporting,
on the one hand, sex-phobic dogmatism and, on the other hand, an acknowledgment of the
power of sex idols. This was also acknowledged by a celebrity blogger of that time, Han Han,
who in 2009 had caused uproar by openly supporting and linking his blog to the Japanese AV
star Kaede Matsushima. He quickly responded to these criticisms by arguing that China is mired
in repression and impotency and that, as a new world society, it needs to adapt healthily to adult
content. As he wrote:
Our country thinks that these kinds of products are unhealthy. I cannot understand it.
If having sex is unhealthy, then we are all unhealthy products. As a matter of fact, this
is healthy but our country is not. For any country that has achieved a certain level of
economic and cultural growth, sex will be a serious business. If the government insists
that it’s dirty, obscene, and toxic for youngsters, it only demonstrates that China is still
“impotent” and it hasn’t stood up in the world ...
Japanese AV plays the role of sex enlightenment or sex education lesson for Chinese
youngsters. What the youngster should know about any AV movie is that is edited and
blown out of proportion for artistic effect. So even if you can not do what the actors
do in the movie, you are not impotent.
(Han Han 2009, 89)Han Han made a passionate plea to overcome impotence and warned his young followers not
to be threatened or overwhelmed by the content of adult videos. He himself embodied the new
sexy male: online adept, confident and erudite, and embodying the cult of individualism as part
of a heightened cycle of sexual desire and sexual identity.
Chinese men like to be paired with Japanese fantasy objects that embody youth and inno-
cence. The Japanese porn star also often fits this ideal as she acts out decorous beauty through
archetypes of the bishojo girl, or a cute and courtly young girl, who is often dressed as a submis-
sive waitress, Lolita or schoolgirl. Hence, it seems that the male downloader is keen on maintain-
ing a traditional view of gender and power. Even if sexually explicit media are used and shared
by netizens to build sexual competence and to defend civil liberties, the products themselves
mostly reveal patriarchal fantasies, taboos, and frustrations.
Women’s love of beautiful gay men
While recurring idealtypes are popular among male publics of the pornosphere, there are also
female publics who adore explicit gay animations imported from Japan. They are devouring and
rewriting the animation genres of Boys’ Love (in Chinese called danmei, 801, or simply “BL”),
which depict homosexual love affairs between two characters, be it existing animation charac-
ters, movie stars, or actual celebrities. There are imported commercial products and fan-made
micro-fictions or manga that depict heightened love affairs and sex scenes between an imagined
“dominant” (seme) character and “submissive” (uke) character. The fanfictions are further divided
into genres such as classical Chinese stories, modern stories, and fantasy stories, focusing on the
interplay of “abuse” and “sweet love” between the two characters.
Boys’ Love fans have adopted the label of fujoshi (or “rotten girls”) to playfully denote their
digressions from mainstream morality and artistic output. Like the Japanese database animals,
they do not develop full-scale narratives but proudly produce serialized “low art” around their
idols, which are neatly archived and classified according to a “database imagination” (Manovich
2001, 218). Just like the endlessly stratified databases of porn stars and fetishes, they are divided