Freeing Her Self: The Male Bottom in Chinese Boys' Love (BL) Fiction

This thesis explores the reasons why Chinese women are interested in Boys' Love (BL) fiction and the male bottom. Specifically, it explores why Chinese women construe the figure of the male bottom in a particular way, such that he is simultaneously the most humanized character in the text and the only male character upon whom fantasies of male pregnancy are performed. Mainly using the frameworks of feminist theory and audience theory, I connect Chinese patriarchal violence to the various tropes found in Chinese BL fiction. In particular, my thesis explores the social forces and mechanisms that police the female body, complex intimate relationships, and the violent institutions of marriage and childbirth, as the various real-life violences for women that can be traced in the tropes of Chinese BL web novels and male pregnancy (mpreg) fanfictions. Using a combination of ethnographic data, discourse and textual analysis, and autoethnographic reflections as my methodology, I aim to explore why women want and need to fantasize the self as a male bottom, rather than a female character. The thesis argues that the male bottom in Chinese BL fiction, particularly web novels and mpreg fanfiction, is a fantasized female subject, through whom Chinese women can give accounts of their experienced violence, can have more freedom in expressing their desires, and can also express anger. I assert that the male body of the male bottom, instead of a female body, is necessary for these tasks, because the male body not only provides women with a safe psychological distance but also allows them to escape the psychosocial constraints of being a woman. Overall, this thesis argues that Chinese BL fiction is a form of subconscious storytelling, a form of subconscious contention with patriarchal power, for Chinese women. By focusing on the particular portrayals of the male bottom that pervade Chinese BL, my research examines some of Chinese women's hidden, unconscious gendered fantasies, uncovering their hidden sentiments and subconscious resistances to gendered social structures in Chinese society. Studying Chinese women's reflections on Chinese gendered social structures through BL fiction, I seek to illustrate the porosity of Chinese patriarchal structures. This research thus contributes to broader literature on the various ways women contend with patriarchal power and violence.