So, I just spent the most awesome hour reading through an online webcomic called OGLAF.COM. Here’s the author’s description:

This comic started out as an attempt to make pornography.

It degenerated into sex comedy pretty much immediately.

And yep, from the very first comic (incredibly NSFW!), I can tell you it is often pretty gosh darn explicit. But it’s often more than a little hot as well. And pretty much always really, really funny.

While it’s not gay per se (there is lots and lots of heterosexual stuff — WARNING: boobies!), there is certainly a lot of gay content as well (and many weenies to view throughout, if you like that sort of thing ).

Here’s an example:

Click to enlarge. Pixelation added by me in lame attempt to protect those subscribing to blog posts via email. If you use her art, the author has requested you include a link to OGLAF.com.

Click here to see original at OGLAF.com.

In some ways, there is an air of mystery about this comic. No “About Page”. No copyright information. No author description. I’m guessing the name of the site comes from this very NSFW comic, but that character has only appeared a few times and his creation could be very well be a ret-con. (EDIT 7/24/10: The creator just responded to this question on Twitter…) Using my Google-fu, I was able to find out who the creator is and that she is a woman, but it seems that she wishes to remain somewhat anonymous which I will respect here.

My overall review: It’s well-written and well-drawn. Both women and men are made to look powerful and foolish in equal capacity. It’s quite geeky — if you’ve ever played a role-playing game, you’ll get more than a few in-jokes. There are many little surprises that show the creator has put a lot of thought into the site (for example, there’s a really adorable 404 page — try entering a non-existant page on oglaf.com in your location bar to see it). And it’s very funny — while reading through the entire series, the time just flew by. I know not everyone can handle the heterosex, but if you can, this comic gets my strongest recommendation.

Where to start? There is an Archive page which helpfully points out which comics are NSFW and which are safer (there are a few non-sexual ones). But I suggest you start with the first comic (very NSFW) and just read your way through by clicking Next Page. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and be on the look out for an “Epilogue” link to appear in the right sidebar at the end of certain stories (the first one is at the end of Glove) — it’s like a hidden bonus comic.

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So on Saturday, TheYaoiReview (recently moved to San Francisco) took me to a BBQ at Deb Aoki’s house. It was a delightful time with tasty food (chicken and edamame rice!) and fun, geeky conversation that lasted several hours. Gia of AnimeVice was there — as vivacious and trenchant as I remember her being from previous YaoiCon encounters — as was Jason Thompson, author of the must-read Manga: The Complete Guide, who greeted everyone, including yours truly, with an enthusiastic and sincere “Wow! You’re the one responsible for (the Yaoi Review/Yaoi 911/Kasumi/etc.)?!” (Very flattering — must remember to invite Jason to all future BBQs I attend…)

The ride up with TheYaoiReview — quick-witted, insightful and stylish as ever — afforded the opportunity to deepen a friendship with my new neighbor while opening up my mind to stunningly novel uses of cream cheese (and I thought it was just for bagels!). Once arrived, I sat next to the delightful Surt Lim, writer of the Del Rey fantasy-shojo manga Kasumi, and swapped stories about the benefits and pitfalls of being a Western writer working with foreign artists — a rare and validating experience. And I finally got the pleasure of meeting About.com’s Deb Aoki in person and discovered she is a wonderful, generous host with a private manga library whose bookshelves rival those of Kinokuniya Bookstore in San Francisco’s Japantown. So generous a host, in fact, that she wouldn’t let any of us leave without placing some personally-selected manga choices into each of our hands and thus I wound up leaving the party four mangas richer than I came. (Thanks, Deb!) So, I thought I might take a few moments to give some quick reactions to a couple that I’ve read during my Sunday recovering from all the fun and food.

Once Upon A Glashma was the first book I sunk my teeth into — the tagline of “Before wizards or magic, the world was filled with girls. But one day, the girls disappeared and only wizards remained…” was intriguing and the art was just too adorable to resist. Alas, adorable art is all this book has to offer. First of all, despite a cover that screams taciturn seme and cuddly uke and a premise of “a world without girls”, this is not BL. Rather, it is what I what I like to call faux-BL: a completely slashable premise with no sex, no kissing (of other men, that is) and only the vaguest, most easily deniable innuendos that some guy-on-guy loving might be occurring somewhere far, far off-stage.

Second, the story is a confusing mess with cliché relationships. The first chapters throw us in the middle of the action with little explanation — our heroes, magic-investigating government agents, are seen fighting a dragon, wrestling with an exploding man or fighting a trash monster with almost no set-up — and the resolutions that are offered to these crises feel rushed. The artwork, while beautiful, unfortunately makes the action difficult to follow and the characters’ behavior — mostly consisting of hot-tempered “sempai” Gotanda bullying wimpy underling Nippori — is consistently baffling. (Why exactly does Gotanda treat Nippori this way? He’s seems to have done nothing to deserve it. I constantly had to refer to previous, better written works in my head for an account of why these characters would treat each other as they did. ["Oh! I bet here she's going for an Roy x Ed dynamic but with a bit of Al thrown in..."]

This manga has a ton of great ideas and intriguing characters, but creator Kumiko Suekane just doesn’t take the time to flesh them out. Even the obligatory humor chapter — where a bunch of frat boys try to convert our heroes into beautiful girls complete with maid uniforms — feels perfunctory and rushed. Only in the second half, when we start to learn the reason why all the women have disappeared, does some form of coherent storytelling start to take hold — but even in these final pages, the answers feel hurried, one-dimensional and cliché. I would love to read a well-written fantasy-yaoi with clean-lined characters as cute as the ones depicted in these pages — and perhaps if this had been three volumes instead of one, that could have happened here — but I can only recommend this book to you if don’t have to pay for it and you are desperate for reading material. As one reviewer put it, “read it at Borders.” (For other takes, the author of MAYBE YOU’RE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER BLOG… finds the book “craptastic… in every sense of the word.” Otaku News has a bit more patience with it.)


Chocolate Surprise, on the other hand, is very much true BL where the seme is always the dark-haired one and the ukes always, always cry out “No!” during sex (no matter how much they were begging for it in the beginning). A collection of nine short comics, the character art is nowhere near as good as Suekane-sensei’s Once Upon A Glashma — not only is the linework somewhat dull and predictable, the ukes are very, very feminine, often chicks-with-dicks level feminine which kind of makes you wonder why Lily Hoshino bothered telling these as yaoi stories at all. (As one woman at the BBQ put it, “Hoshino-sensei should just throw a skirt on the uke and be done with it!”)

That said, the sex is as explicit as I have ever seen in yaoi, in all senses of that word — not only do you get hard-core activities, but what’s happening is always clear and almost nothing is obscured. You get to see it all — including pubic hair, a rarity in my yaoi journeys — while the sex still manages to hold on to the delicacy and sweetness we would expect from a yaoi work (with these tender first encounters, no one would ever mistake this for bara…) I have to admit it — despite the feminine (and often very young) depictions of some of the characters, I did find many of the sex scenes actually hot — and if it’s enough to get my motor running, I would imagine that hard-core yaoi fans will need to keep some extra heart medication on hand, just in case. Finally, the storytelling itself, while not especially memorable (each of these stories are first-time love encounters involving one very interested boy and one not-so-interested-oh-I-guess-I-really-am-interested boy) is solid with often quite satisfying endings (narratively as well as romantically).

I wouldn’t buy this book for a night of great literature, but if you can get past the feminine character art and are looking for a little one-handed meditation, it’s definitely worth your $12.95. Gay boy Alex says “Check it out.” (That said, while it got my boat afloat, Connie C. of Manga Recon was “singularly unimpressed” with the book, finding it “explicit in a way I was not comfortable with”. [Perhaps highlighting a gay boy/fangirl divide?] Read her short take for a different perspective.)

Ultimately, I found myself wanting the best of both books — the lovely artwork and cool ideas behind Kumiko Suekane’s Once Upon A Glashma coupled with the more accomplished restraint and actual guy-on-guy loving found in Lily Hoshino’s Chocolate Surprise. Who knows — perhaps I’ll find what I’m looking for in the other two books Deb lent me: Saemi Yorita’s Brilliant Blue and You Higuri’s Ludwig II.

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A lot of folks I showed this video to — both straight and gay — found it to be perfect to show to their friends who don’t quite “get it”. It certainly helps bring home the subtler forms of prejudice and ignorance that are hard for all of us to shake. Since cool people come to this blog, I decided it was worth sharing here. And let’s face it -- he’s a cutie.

Check it out and pass it on.

Are You Straight?

(Found on Colin Thornby’s blog Conservatio Morum: Conversion of Life)

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EDIT: Amazon responds to my email! See below.

In his Livejournal post today, Mark R. Probst revealed this shocking news:

On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.”

Now “sales rankings disappearing” might not mean a lot to the average reader. What matters is the result — that hundreds of LGBT books were now no longer showing up in Amazon.com searches!

After writing Amazon customer service, Probst got this response:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

Yes, you read that right: Amazon is now classifying LGBT books as “adult material” and excluding them from searches. Remember Manly, the book I reviewed last fall? Back in September, when I reviewed it I was able to find that book on Amazon by typing in the name of the book and the author’s name in the Amazon.com search box. Now when I type in that information, this is what I get:

Ah but, you say, Manly actually is an explicitly sexual comic — that’s not so strange to label as “adult”, no?

Well, it’s not just the sexy books that are being hidden from search. Here’s Pete Cashmore from Mashable:

In the comments of that post, and elsewhere on LiveJournal, readers have been searching Amazon to find bias in the books removed from the rankings. The examples found do appear to hold water: for instance, the aforementioned post claims that the raciest section in The Well of Loneliness, one of the novels no longer ranked, is the phrase “And that night they were not divided.” Another, False Colours is a historical novel about a gay relationship with a single, non-explicit sex scene, explains the same source. The classic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover has also been removed from rankings.

(Cashmore somewhat misleadingly uses words like “accused” and “alleged” in his post, I assume in an attempt to appear balanced – the reality is that these results are easy to confirm for yourself and have been confirmed by others online. More on the broad brush Amazon is painting with at Queers United.)

As it turns out, Young Adult books with gay characters, prominent romance novels and many other titles have been made inaccessible via Amazon’s main search function. It would be one thing to give customers the option to have their Amazon searches be “child safe” – certainly giving readers the option to be shielded from explicit sexual material seems reasonable. But to paint with so wide a brush (including what seems to be ALL GLBT fiction as “adult”) and to take the choice out of the customer’s hands. Well, that’s just wrong.

Here is the email I sent to Amazon customer support:

Hello,

I’ve been a very frequent Amazon customer for many years and am an Amazon Prime customer as well. I am horrified by the hamhanded new policy you have of excluding LGBT books from search and sales ranking. I use Amazon search to find nearly everything I buy on Amazon and to have that limited is insane. In a regular bookstore, if I was looking for a book, I could just ask the shopkeeper and she would bring it to me – but if you are limiting your search based on LGBT content, you are effectively hiding those books from me and keeping me from buying them.

Even using the author’s name in a search box with the name of the title gets me no results!

Instead of this: http://ow.ly/2GkG This is what my Amazon search for “Manly Dale Lazarov” returns: http://twitpic.com/388qk

And you’re even excluding gay classics with no sex at all! http://ow.ly/2Ggj

This is awful! What were you guys thinking?!

I buy nearly everything from Amazon and now I’m going to have to rethink whether I want to be your customer at all. It’d be one thing if you instituted a safe search provision that gave people the option for a “child safe” search – but just to make these changes for everyone with a sweep of your mouse… This is hateful!

Please, rethink this policy. I want to stay your customer but if you continue to discriminate against LGBT work, then I won’t be able to do so.

Sincerely,

Alex Woolfson

If you would like to express your thoughts to Amazon about their actions, their Executive Customer Service email address is ecr@amazon.com and their U.S. Customer Support number is 1-800-201-7575. This won’t change unless people speak up. If it matter to you at all, you should take the 5 minutes to let them know your thoughts!

(Amazon Customer Support reps apparently also encourage you to log in your Amazon account and use their internal email to complain as the best way to get their attention. I agree as is shows you are an Amazon customer and I did this as well. To send them an email, go to their home page http://www.amazon.com/ click Help (upper right), click Contact Us (yellow button, middle right), enter your username and password, click Email and choose “Other Questions & Comments” as the Issue in the dropdown menu. Then let them know exactly what you think of this change.)

For more on this, I recommend reading this excellent article at Dear Author and this smart business focused article from the net.effect blog of foreignpolicy.com on the growing reaction on the Internet and how Amazon must respond. And now, the always excellent Simon Jones of Icaraus Publishing discusses the bigger picture of having companies like Amazon.com be the monopoly gatekeepers of digital content.)

Please, don’t just sit there shaking your head. Let Amazon know how this choice will effect their business now!

EDIT 1 (Monday morning): Amazon is now claiming it’s all just “a glitch”. The Dear Author blog responds with some very compelling evidence that it was clearly targeted against LGBT, making a “glitch” seem unlikely. (And in that same link offers a good explanation why A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality was spared the axe and thus became the #1 search result for the word “homosexuality” in Amazon.) Also, writer-superstar Neil Gaiman, of Sandman and Coraline fame, weighs in.

EDIT 2 (4/13 5:00 P.M.): Amazon just responded to my email from yesterday, stating there was an “embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error”. Well, more of a mea culpa than a “glitch” at least…

Here’s the text of their email:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

EDIT 3: And now here’s a plausible account of what happened — about what I figured, user error lead to painting with too broad a brush. That said, I still think search filters for “adult material” should be in the hands on the individual customers. And the response of the Internet community still speaks volumes to how far we’ve come in the last decade.

EDIT 4 (4/14/09 12:30PM): And now that the dust settles, editor Cheryl Morgan offers this excellent re-cap and commentary on the whole thing. (Although while I do think that if “WH Smith or Waterstone’s decided to put gay literature on more obscure shelves” it wouldn’t have been as big a deal, a more analogous example to items not appearing in the main search would be if shopkeepers acted like the gay books you were looking for weren’t on the shelves at all — and I do think that would have gotten noticed! ) And a link from that article gives the blow-by-blow of what was happening inside of Amazon as the problem got noticed.

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Howdy

I’ve gotten several requests for this, so I’ve decided to make my “tweets” public for anyone who might be interested. My Twitter username is “alexwoolfson“. And in the spirit of fellow self-publisher and all-around cool guy Wil Wheaton, I’m letting you know here what to expect from me on Twitter.

(Oh, and what is Twitter, you ask? Well, it’s one of those online things you actually have to try out to truly appreciate — I dragged my feet on joining my friends on it for over a year because I just didn’t get the point — but here is a pretty good introduction. You should also read that Wil Wheaton post, too, just to get a very experienced perspective. Basically, Twitter users write short 140 character messages that are broadcast to anyone who “follows” you. These “tweets” are, in theory, answering the question “What are you doing?” but are really used for anything you want to share with your friends and the world.)

I don’t tweet a lot about yaoi

For me, Twitter is mostly a quick way for me to share what I’m thinking about or find cool in a given moment to my friends (and you, Dear Reader, I certainly think of as a friend!) Whereas, I try to stay completely on-topic on this blog, Twitter is a chance for me to share and comment about all the other things that turn me on. I do tweet the milestones with our comics (such as receiving new art I’m excited about), but mostly I’m commenting about media I’m enjoying (usually sci-fi TV or movies), making comics in general, writing in general, social media in general, marketing ideas for book publishers, cool tech toys and sometimes just how I’m feeling. It’s like tiny samples of my mind shouted out to the universe two or three times a day.

It’s personal, baby

Now, I do my absolute best to make sure everything I write on this blog will have value to a lot of people and especially yaoi fans. I spend a lot of time on my posts here and think very hard about what I’m going to post about before hitting that Publish button. But for me, Twitter is best when it’s uncensored personal sharing — when I don’t spend a lot of time trying to make a tweet perfect or even really thinking about it much at all. If it’s on my mind, it’s sent out on Twitter.

This means that my signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is going to be a lot lower than it is here. And what you’ll read about through my Twitter account is more about me, personally, than it is about yaoi or any of the other topics on this blog. If reading stuff like that appeals to you, definitely check me out on Twitter. If not, my feelings won’t be hurt — in fact, I’d totally understand. Stick with the blog.

(Oh, and you probably shouldn’t follow my tweets on your phone. I tweet at all hours, even very early in the morning. Save your sanity and save my Tweets for your Twitter homepage or your computer. )

I do read all of my @alexwoolfson replies

And if things aren’t too crazy, I will definitely respond back. I do read every one of those @alexwoolfson replies and your thoughts and interest in me and my work are much appreciated. In fact, the comments I have received on this blog and through that Feedback button (down in the lower right of every blog page) have really been awesome support and make all the hard work worthwhile. You, Dear Reader, are why I am making these comics — and your thoughts and opinions matter a lot to me. If I’m swamped with writing a script or notes for our artists, it might take me a bit to get back — but I will absolutely try my best!

So, why follow Alex on Twitter?

To recap, you should follow me:

• if you want to know more about me personally
• if you want to see sneak previews of Yaoi 911 art
• if you’d want to learn about writing, how to make comics, marketing your art/writing, smart ways to use social media (like Twitter and Facebook) or how to successfully publish your own work
• if you’d want to see videos and other topics that just tickle the geek in me
• if you like my sense of humor
• if you’d actually care what I’d have to say about sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies

Still undecided? You can see some of my most current tweets over in the sidebar on the right. And you can follow me (and/or read even more of my tweets) over at my Twitter page.

See you there!

In 2005, an English-language survey was conducted online by communications professor and literary author Dru Pagliassotti which asked the question: who is really reading yaoi in the West? Now Dr. Pagliassotti has collected her findings in an academic paper for Particip@tions – the Journal of Audience & Reception Studies entitled “Reading Boys’ Love in the West” which is currently available online.

Strong Enough For An Academic, But Made By A Fan

The findings in this study are fascinating, but have no doubt, the intended audience for this work is other academics. Take a look at this sentence from the introduction:

Romance as a literary genre has been so often criticized and defended that it virtually forms an academic sub-discipline of its own, revolving around the question of whether female readers’ enjoyment of romances is an empowering oppositional act of textual appropriation or a disempowering acceptance of the dominant, heterosexual, patriarchal model of love, courtship, and marriage.

“An empowering oppositional act of textual appropriation”? Hoo doggie — People magazine, this ain’t. I would imagine that many non-academic readers would hit that paragraph and stop right there. But let me suggest that you keep on reading her paper because after Dr. Pagliassotti has established the academic street cred of talking about yaoi fans, the rest of her style is surprisingly straight-forward and accessible. It is clear both from her knowledge of BL history and her passion for this subject that she is a fellow fan. And the results of her survey offer a number of items of interest — both for fans and publishers alike.

But How Much Can We Trust This Study?

But before we get into detailing what those results are, let’s take a moment to look at how exactly Dr. Pagliassotti arrived at her findings regarding yaoi fandom. Whenever a study has provocative findings I, for one, like to know a bit about its methodology and the limits of those methods. (It’s been my experience that the mainstream media breathlessly reports every new scientific discovery with gleeful abandon — “Chocolate is good for you!”; “Night lights damage kids’ eyesight!” — while rarely taking the time to examine at how rigorous or unbiased those studies actually were. And IMHO, this is doing a tremendous disservice to their readership.)

Now, as a layperson yaoi blogger, I have neither the resources nor the expertise to give “Reading Boys’ Love in the West”‘s methodology a truly professional-level critique — but some things do stand out on their own.

The first thing for us to look at is the sample size of the survey — were enough people surveyed for Dr. Pagliassotti to have obtained statistically accurate results? Well, the English-language survey was conducted online in 2005 and had 478 respondents. If memory serves from my undergraduate statistics class, while 478 respondents might seem like a low number to a lay person, statistically speaking any number above 400 tends to provide very accurate results — in fact, conducted properly, the results can be over 90% accurate.

But the rub is, this “accuracy” is only valid if the sample is actually taken from a truly random distribution of the population you are trying to study — if every member of a population has an equally likely chance of being selected. (For example, I can claim I have interesting findings about what straight men really think about monogamy, but if I only survey men at swingers’ clubs, then I’m not actually getting accurate data about all straight men, just those who frequent swingers’ clubs, right?) And it’s here that we must exercise some caution in accepting Dr. Pagliassotti’s numbers at face value.

Most troubling in terms of methodology is that this survey (which was conducted online) appears to have been self-selected — meaning it used a survey process that allowed anyone who was interested to respond. This is problematic for a number of reasons, primarily because of the issue of representation. It is argued in a number of places online — and I think rightly — that self-selected surveys will only get you information about those who already hold strong opinions on the subject you are studying and have strong motivation to share them — which might not represent the population you are studying very well or, in the case of “ballot stuffing”-type maneuvers, at all. (And there are those who would argue such surveys are “worthless” just for this reason.)

And there are additional compounding factors in terms of representation for this survey, including as Dr. Pagliassotti notes, limitations that were imposed on her by her institution’s ethics committee:

These surveys’ results might be skewed, however, because the English-language survey was only open to those who reported their age as over 18, due to institutional review board restrictions.

As well as the potential bias that might have been created by the choice to conduct the study online:

These results may also have been affected by the fact that the surveys were online; internet access is correlated with higher income and educational levels.

So, in terms of methodology, there seems to good reason for us to question how well this sample of 478 respondents truly represents BL fans who read yaoi in English, let alone general fandom in the “West”.

Now, that said, I have a great deal of sympathy for Dr. Pagliassotti’s choice to use a self-selected Internet survey here — after all, how would you go about getting a truly random sampling of English-language BL fans? Even just randomly grabbing Yaoi Con attendees would limit you to those who were both motivated enough and financially solvent enough to attend a national yaoi conference. Getting a truly random sample would be a very tough nut to crack. And the restrictions imposed on her by the ethics committee and the distribution method could be accounted for if we assume we are just reading results relating to adult BL readers with Internet access (perhaps someone just like you, Gentle Reader…)

But these shortcomings in the sample selection cannot be ignored, and thus we must unfortunately view the findings with not just a little skepticism in terms of understanding the yaoi fan community at large. We can use these findings as a springboard for discussion, but I would hesitate to rely on them. As the nature of yaoi fandom is a fascinating area to explore, it is this author’s hope that such discussion would generate enough interest in this topic for further study with a truly random sample of fans — perhaps conducted by Dr. Pagliassotti herself on a future date.

And happily, in addition to the survey results, Dr. Pagliassotti includes a lot of wonderful context in her paper — about the history of yaoi fandom, how yaoi is perceived by native gay Japanese readers as well as the relationship between fans and publishers here in the West that don’t seem to be subject to the same criticisms around methodology as the survey — and all of which make the paper well worth reading.

All’s Fair in Love and Fantasy?

But first, let’s talk a bit about what the survey “revealed.” In her paper, Dr. Pagliassotti takes head-on the assumption that yaoi “is not intended to realistically portray or support homosexuality in society and that its readers, at least in Asian countries, understand it that way.” This view forms the basis of an argument we’ve often heard when discussions about inaccurate (and even offensive) portrayals of gay men pop up on the Internet — you know the kind, something along the lines of “Hey boys — yaoi is all fantasy and it’s not meant for you, so STFU!” This is an assumption that is definitely worth challenging.

After discussing the studies and opinion pieces that support this claim, Dr. Pagliassotti states:

What the previously cited studies did not address, however, were Japanese gay and lesbian readers of boy’s love.  Assumptions that Japanese BL readers were only, or primarily, heterosexual women have been challenged by Lunsing (2006), who also argued that that BL manga do not merely “exist in a world of fantasy”: I found that many of my gay informants were not only familiar with BLB [boy loves boy] manga but read them voraciously from the moment they came on the market in the mid-1970s.

In terms of Western readers, in her survey Dr. Pagliassotti found that 11% of BL readers were male and an astonishing 53% identified their sexual orientation as something other than heterosexual. In addition, 45% claimed they perceived yaoi characters as “somewhat realistic” or “very realistic” (instead of pure fantasy as is claimed by the rebutters). And, most provocatively, Dr. Pagliassotti argues (again based on the results of her survey), that BL readers in the West are overwhelmingly in favor of gay rights and gay marriage:

The final question in the English-language survey asked whether respondents thought same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States. At the time, the only state issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples was Massachusetts, which began doing so in 2004. As a result, the issue of same-sex marriage in the U.S. was on the public agenda when the survey was put online. An overwhelming majority, 96% (n=389), of the respondents said “yes” to the question of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Now those are some juicy results — which unfortunately we cannot 100% trust. Do yaoi fans support gay right? Based on the responses I’ve received on this blog, some certainly do. Are all yaoi readers heterosexual women? Again, based on the responses I’ve received, I’d say certainly not. But that 96% are gay rights supporters? And only 47% identify as heterosexual? Well, maybe… but based on a self-selected survey, we can’t be confident of this. Which is a shame, because I’d really love to know what the real percentages are.

What we can be confident of based on these results, though, is that any exclusionary definition of yaoi fans that claim that “all yaoi fans are X” is flawed. The survey results at the very least support the assertion that yes indeed yaoi fans come in all different sexual orientations, more than a few look to yaoi for realistic character portrayals and at least some are strongly pro-gay as well. And, well, maybe we already knew that, but it’s nice to see some results in black and white — even if we can’t trust the exact percentages.

And there are other interesting tidbits in the paper, particularly for publishers of yaoi. Such as:

Why Fans Choose A Particular Book

Dr. Pagliassotti states:

Respondents reported a number of considerations that affected their decision to buy, borrow, or download a particular issue of BL manga. The most common reasons — the categories were nonexclusive — in the English-language survey were familiarity with the author (78%), appreciation of the inside art (73%), and reading an interesting online description of the issue (67%). Other reasons cited by over half of respondents included liking the cover (56%) and a friend’s recommendation (53%). 

How Free Comics Encourage The Purchase Of For-Pay Comics

There was apparently a free-form open comment section of the survey which elicited a number of interesting responses, including how downloading scanlations encourages purchase of the physical book:

In the open comment section of the survey, a few English-language respondents denigrated scanlations; for example, “Boycott scanlations. Re-publishing an artist’s work without permission isn’t ‘fannish.’”  However, more argued that scanlations help readers decide what to purchase: “I would more likely buy a manga I’ve partially or totally read online then a manga I’ve never had access to,” and “Scans are important for deciding on potential online purchases; the costs of import shipping equal zero urge to take risks on the unknown.”

I, of course, found this particularly interesting and certainly hope there’s truth to it. (Or at least enough truth to support my ability to continue to make yaoi comics!)

Western Fans Relationship With Western Publishers

But most interesting was Dr. Pagliassotti’s discussion of Western yaoi fans’ interactions with Western yaoi publishers. This section doesn’t rely on the potentially questionable survey data at all, instead using quotes from representatives of DMP, BLU and DramaQueen to support its assertions.

In discussing the differences between the power of the yaoi fandom vs. other fandoms, Dr. Pagliassotti writes:

In 1992, Jenkins noted that “fans lack direct access to the means of commercial cultural production and have only the most limited resources with which to influence entertainment industry’s decisions” (p. 26).  Jenkins has also described numerous cases of adversarial relations between fandoms and copyright owners. However, perhaps because BL is a relatively new publishing genre in the United States and its reader base is still comparatively small, readers have been able to communicate with and influence the handful of publishers currently licensing and translating boys’ love manga. This communication is carried out online and face-to-face, and publishers are interested in what readers have to say.

Quoting DMP representative Rachel Livingston, she continues:

The relatively high level of interaction BL readers enjoy with BL publishers has led to occasions in which readers have directly influenced publishers’ production decisions. For example, reader demand led to DMP’s entry into the BL novel market, according to Livingston:
“Only the Ring Finger Knows was one of the first yaoi manga that DMP published. We got a couple of requests from the fans to also publish the accompanying novel series. We honestly weren’t sure if there was a market in the US for translated light novels. So we posted a petition online and asked fans interested in the novels to sign it. The response we got was overwhelming so we are currently releasing the series.”

This correlates well with my own discussions and interactions with other BL publishers, with almost everyone I talked to suggesting that fan interest and requests were a big influence in their title selections. (Dr. Pagliassotti actually offers several quotes from industry insiders that speak to this. Interestingly, President and Owner of DramaQueen Tran Nguyen, listed here as a “public relations representative”, offers the only dissent from this line, stating ““we usually have our in-house staff help select the titles.”)

Really, there are a number of other quotes of interest in this section, including how Western publishers respond to scanlations — of their own work as well — and the compromises publishers must make in terms of age-ratings to appease the larger bookstore chains (which I’ve also discussed elsewhere.) It’s tempting to list those quotes here as well, but I already feel like I’m pushing the boundaries of fair-use commentary, so I encourage you to read the paper yourself — these topics are discussed under the sections “Translations & Scanlations” and “Interacting with Publishers” near the end of the paper. They are written about in an accessible and engaging manner and, as I’ve said, suffer from none of the concerns I have about the methodology of the survey.

So What Do You Think?

So, Dr. Pagliassotti’s paper paints a provocative picture of Western yaoi fandom, suggesting that the majority of yaoi fans are pro-gay and don’t identify as heterosexual; that a sizable number don’t see yaoi characters as pure fantasy objects; that fans choose books primarily based on who created it and what the inside art looks like and that BL fans have extraordinary influence over the way BL publishers do business. Her findings directly challenge entrenched assumptions that are made about BL fandom and their relationship to real-life gay people. As a gay man and yaoi creator, I would love to be able to rely on the results as they certainly fall in line with my belief in and desire for an inclusive BL community where all are welcome. And it is with some disappointment that based on how the study was set-up, I feel that I cannot.

But — what do you say? Do these results represent you as a yaoi fan? Do they represent your impression of the yaoi fan community? Please let me know what you think in the comments!

(We won’t be able to make any scientific claims about yaoi fandom in general based on comments in a blog, but I’d sure love to hear what you think. ;-D)

If you’re looking for further information on this topic, Dr. Pagliassotti invites questions about her study at her blog.

EDIT (12/28/08): In private correspondence, Dr. Pagliassotti responded to my concerns saying this (quoted with permission):

Due to the survey’s online nature and respondents’ self-selection, *and* the
fact that my survey didn’t include anyone who reported their age as under 18
(note my cautious phrasing!), the results can be considered indicative, but
their biases need to be acknowledged. The data are almost certainly slanted
to an internet-savvy population, with all the correlations about social
class, etc., implied by that. I’m enheartened, however, by the fact that the
demographics and overall responses didn’t differ wildly from the Italian
survey — except for age. Given that, I believe it’s a reasonably valid
snapshot of (online) non-Asian BL readership a few years ago. Of course, its
imperfections and blind spots open the field to many questions that could be
resolved with different surveys or alternate methodologies. It’s only a
first stab at describing BL fandom outside of Japan on a large scale; I hope
others will be motivated by it to conduct their own work on BL and its
readers.

Thank you, Dr. Pagliassotti, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to respond — and for undertaking this survey in the first place.

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Learn More!

• Hey, guess what — Yaoi 911 is in the bibliography of this paper! Curious which of my blog posts the academic community took notice of? Click on over to Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• The answer seems at this point somewhat obvious, but it is a debate that still comes up from time-to-time. Join me as I ask the question Should Yaoi Be Just For Women?
• There’s some good information for yaoi publishers in Dr. Pagliassotti’s paper. Want some more? Check out our conversation with Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing where he shares secrets about How to Survive as a Small Yaoi Publisher!
• And hey, interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel! The world needs more great yaoi!

©iStockphoto.com/Jamie VanBuskirk

These are the thoughts I’ve been sharing with my friends anyway. And seeing as I consider you all my friends, I thought perhaps you’d be interested.

russketeer wrote:

PROP.8 SUCKS!!!

And I responded:

Yes. It does. It blows my mind that a 52% vote can amend our constitution here in California to make it fundamentally less fair to a minority. There is a book I read in college that left a huge impression on me — Taking Rights Seriously by Ronald Dworkin. In it, he wisely argues that in order for “rights” to mean anything — to be something different than a regular law — that they had to be a special claim against the majority, meaning (for, say, Freedom of Speech) that even if the majority wants you to shut up, you are still allowed to speak and publish. We are a country founded on rights and not just laws because there are some freedoms so important they deserve to be protected from tyrants — both foreign kings and the “Tyrant of 51%”.

Ordinarily, I would find challenging a successful referendum in court to be not only sour grapes, but a futile exercise. And, in truth, I looked at the current challenges against Prop 8 in our courts (with the help of the ACLU and others) to be a waste of time — until yesterday when I really looked at what they were arguing. Apparently, the California constitutional amendment process isn’t as crazy as I thought it was and that there are at least some safeguards in place when fundamental rights are involved, so as to prevent, say, all the men of California passing a referendum to restrict freedom of speech to just themselves and not to women. Those looking to overturn this referendum are arguing that this more stringent process (which requires a legislative vote before the matter is put before the people) should have been used in this case and thus a simple majority vote was not enough to take away the fundamental rights of a minority. It’s an argument I’m sympathetic to — we’ll see how it plays out in the courts. And we’ll see if even the current form of it gets overturned, whether something similar doesn’t find it’s way onto our ballots in the next few years. I don’t think we’ll have heard the last of it.

That said… (quoting from Russketeer again:)

Gay marriage will happen in our lifetime. It’s just a matter of time…

Slowly but surely.

Yes, I think so too. As a kid, I would never have believed we would have come so far with this issue, so soon, but despite our recent losses, it feels like those who selfishly want to reserve the institution of marriage all to themselves are merely delaying the inevitable.

A year back or so, I saw something that really opened my eyes to this. Jon Stewart was interviewing a conservative commentator on The Daily Show (I don’t remember who) and the subject of gay marriage bans came up (which the conservative commentator was lobbying for). And John Stewart asked him a rare serious question — “So, do you really think you’re going to win this?” — and was as surprised as I was by the commentator’s candid response “Oh, no. Gay marriage will be the law of the land. I’m sure of that. It’s inevitable.” After Mr. Stewart picked up his jaw from the floor, he asked “So… why are you fighting so hard against it?” And I think the commentator responded (don’t 100% remember): “Because it’s what I believe is right.”

Now, I bow to that commentator fighting for what he believes is right. But what’s important was that even he had to admit that he is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Levy whatever criticisms you want, throughout its history, the United States has seen a steady progress of becoming more fair to all its citizens. When I’m feeling particularly cynical, it’s important for me to remember that less than 100 years ago, women didn’t even have the vote in this country — and now that seems utterly crazy.

Yes, we have a long way to go before we live in a truly fair society. But I truly believe we will get there — and, as a signpost on the way to that, yes I think we will see nationwide gay marriage in our lifetime…

Peace out, friends…

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• Curious about the legal issues facing creators, retailers and publishers who publish work with mature themes? Then read Why Comics Need Age Ratings!
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• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not get your own butt throw into jail? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga designed to fight The Power? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

©iStockphoto.com/Alejandro Raymond

(2/14/10: Final sentencing update of Handley at bottom of post. Pretty grim…)

I’ve written about them before, but if there ever was a time for yaoi fans to donate some money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, it’s now.

A Manga Fan Is Arrested In His Home For Owning Manga

From CBLDF’s October 09, 2008 press release:

Mr. Handley’s case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector’s office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley’s collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley’s collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.

To give some context for how extraordinary this is, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein said this:

Handley’s case is deeply troubling, because the government is prosecuting a private collector for possession of art. In the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the Federal Government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books.

To Protect The Children

And what moved this postal inspector to set up this sting? Well, of course it has to do with alleged drawings of underage characters. Not photographs, mind you — or even drawings of actual minors — but drawn manga characters who only ever existed in the minds of the creators before ever seeing life on paper. Luckily, in this case, the judge dismissed the issue of alleged child pornography:

(Again from the press release)

Eric Chase and his team at the United Defense Group have been vigorously defending Handley, and scored a major First Amendment victory earlier this year when the judge found portions of the PROTECT Act unconstitutional in his ruling on a motion to dismiss. District Judge Gritzner of the Southern District of Iowa found that subsections 1466(a)(2) and (b)(2) of 18 U.S.C. 1466A unconstitutional. Those sections make it a crime to knowingly produce, distribute, receive, or possess with intent to distribute, “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting,” that “is, or appears to be” a minor engaged in sexual conduct. Judge Gritzner found that those sections restrict protected speech and are constitutionally infirm.

Simon Jones provides his as-always excellent analysis why the defense team succeeded in this motion:

…the presiding judge has ruled that the portion of the PROTECT Act which deals specifically with the depiction of minors cannot be applied to this case. (The Supreme Court earlier this year addressed this issue. While this section survived, the justices were also clear that it can only be applied to fictional imagery when the image is clearly based on or derived from actual identifiable minors, i.e. a tracing or digital composite imagery.) [EDITOR NOTE: I discuss this ruling a bit and quote some of the text in this comment -- look at the bottom of the comment for my discussion.]

But this manga fan can still be prosecuted for purchasing and possessing obscene material — and faces up to twenty years in prison for this alleged crime!

(Again from the CBDLF press release: )

Handley now faces charges under the surviving sections of 1466A, which will require a jury to determine whether the drawings at issue are legally obscene. The material cannot be deemed obscene unless it meets all three of the criteria of the Miller test for obscenity: “(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; [EDITOR NOTE: That means it's intended to sexually arouse -- offensive violence is, of course, in itself still considered protected speech. ] (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The jury must answer all three questions in the affirmative in order to convict.

How much danger is this manga fan in? Simon gives us the real-world context:

However, Handley is still on the hook for obscenity related offenses, and this is where the waters become murky. The defense’s best chance is to convince the jury that the manga passes the last of the three-pronged Miller test. But this is an uphill battle, as the jury is asked to decide (in the third portion of the test) whether the work has “serious artistic value,” instead of whether the work was a “serious artistic endeavor.” The spirit of the law really asks for the latter – serious artistic endeavors still routinely produce bad art that nevertheless deserve protection, unfortunately that’s not how the standard is worded. And obscenity laws have a built-in catch 22: if a jury finds the material not obscene, they are in effect saying that the material is regularly consumed in their community… at least, that’s what the prosecution would lead the jury to believe. Now, how many people who own porn would admit that to, say, a prospective employer? Their friends and relatives? In a court of law? The fear and embarrassment factor is so great, juries often completely disregard expert testimony.

So, without a lot of smart defensive lawyering, things look pretty grim for this manga fan. Now, why is this guy’s case important for you and me? Because case law sets precedent. If this guy is successfully prosecuted, it emboldens prosecutors to go after other manga fans and makes it more likely that they will get convictions. As we all know, “protecting the children” has tremendous political appeal — and manga fans both in this country and in others are often seen as easy targets for the media and the government.

What this prosecution needs is a splash of cold water.

What Can You Do

Prosecutions are very expensive — for the defendant. The government has vast financial resources they can to bring to bear to “protect the children” — fictional or not –and the typical manga fan, as you know, often doesn’t. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is contributing money, time and expertise to defend this manga fan — and I know they are just squeaking by in terms of having any money to work with. Let’s face it — when it comes to providing legal funds to protect comic book creators and retailers from censorship and prosecution, how many people do you know who have given any money at all?

Well, now’s the time. Even a little bit of money will make a huge difference. Give $20. Give $40. Hell, give $5 dollars. Whatever. If you think what the government is doing here is wrong — if you think people should be able to buy and own manga — even manga that you, yourself, might not approve of — without going to jail for twenty years, then give money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund right now.

If you give $30 on this page, you even get a snazzy print of some green creature with horns holding a torch, and gosh, how cool is that?

(And if you don’t want to give one of their predetermined amounts, you can just use the PayPal Donation Button on the right sidebar of their press release page. [Scroll down just a bit on that page and look to the right for PayPal.] I just gave them $100 that way — took me ten seconds.)

You can’t let the government get away with this. You need to take action right now. Become a card-carrying member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Donate some money to help protect creators, retailers and fellow manga fans from unfair prosecutions.

Because the next manga fan they could go after — could very well be you.

(Thank you to MangaBlog for making me aware of this. For more information, here are other links Brigid at MangaBlog and Simon reference:

)

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• Curious about the legal issues facing creators, retailers and publishers who publish work with mature themes? Then read Why Comics Need Age Ratings!
• Wondering what kind of moral issues creators face? Check out Should Yaoi Creators Fight Sexism?
• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not get your own butt throw into jail? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga designed to piss off The Man? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

Bara Art from Kowmeiism
© 2008 Kowmeiism

Like any blogger, I keep an eye on my Web site’s stats and visitors and I’ve discovered that a significant number of readers come here though search engines looking for “bara” — that is, Japanese gay male romance manga written by gay men for gay men (referred to by some as “muscle yaoi” due to the fact that the character design often is fairly muscular — particularly compared to traditional yaoi-style bishonen.)

As I’ve mentioned before, discussions of bara in English — let alone English translations — have been hard to come by. But this looks like this might be starting to change. As a service to my readers, I will use this post to provide links for English-speakers to explore Bara manga. I will update it as I discover more sites (and if you have any other suggestions, please include them in the comments!)

(Needless to say, the links I’m including below are ALL Not Safe For Work [or for looking at in front of Grandma, etc.] — you’ve been warned [or encouraged, depending... ])

Bara is hot

First off, let me get this off my chest — I find bara quite hot, more so than many (but not all) of the yaoi works I’ve read and certainly much more than traditional Western gay male comics.

It’s fairly easy for me to put my finger on what it is about bara that beats out the majority of what gets published in Western gay male comics (such as what you might find at, say, Class Comics) — it’s the character design. Bara guys tend to be fairly muscular, which is not so different than what you’d find in Western gay comics. What does seem different is the obsession with monstrous proportions we seem to have in the west.

Take for example the work of LOGAN. This is a gay male comics artist whose artwork I find absolutely superb — he’s got serious chops in terms of linework, colors, composition, you name it. But his men leave me icy cold. Their muscles have muscles and the penises appear easily as large as my forearm. I understand that this sort of thing is hot for some (just like I’m aware that monstrous-sized breasts are appealing to certain straight boys), but for me, looking at this artwork doesn’t turn me on — I just want to buy these poor fellows a back-brace or something. (For a particularly freaky understanding of this, step into the uncanny valley with me and check out some of LOGAN’s Poser artwork.)

Now, I’m sure that serious bara fans would be able to provide me with links to Bara Of Unusual Size, but my point is that this sort of design seems to be the norm with Western gay comics and not so much with the Japanese ones. Likewise, and this is done less often (as there is a fair amount of “twink” art), this “super-sizing” also seems to apply to depictions of hypermasculinity in Western gay comics’ design — making all the guys super-furry, tough-looking and ideally wrapped up in a whole lotta leather. (Ultimately, I suppose we can thank the influence of Tom of Finland for much of this.) It just feels to me like it’s trying way too hard, protesting too much, so while Your Mileage May Vary, for me it’s a big meh. I’m just not much for extremes, in real life or in comic art, so there we are.

And now that I think of it, one reason why bara might often be hotter for me than much of yaoi probably has to do with avoiding another extreme — the hyperfeminization you often find in the design of male characters. Not surprisingly, as a gay man I like my guys to look like guys. Now of course, some yaoi artists like that too — and their art I often will find erotic — but for those who don’t, well I can appreciate the romance in those books, but it won’t get my motor running.

So bara carves out a bit of a happy medium for me in terms of how the guys look — and that makes its artwork especially appealing for me.

(And to be perfectly honest, I’ve found that there is some technical understanding of how gay sex usually works in real life that the bara creators seem to get a bit better. While there does seem to be a fair amount of the inevitable anal intercourse consummation that you find in yaoi works, there also seems to be a deeper awareness that oral sex and mutual masturbation are also considered equally valid and fulfilling ways for two guys to make love — and that anal sex isn’t necessarily something first-timers would be down for. I find this understanding makes the sex more believable for me and thus, ultimately, hotter. Again, I’m sure we could find yaoi/bara examples that disprove the rule, but speaking generally, this is a distinction I’ve found appealing.)

A Good Place to Start

So hopefully I’ll be able to add a number of links to this post, but I found that good place to start for a nice sample of bara in English is at

Baralover

At this site you will find bara manga from a good-sized variety of creators all translated into English. Now, be warned, these are scanlations — meaning that the original creators have NOT been compensated for the work you are downloading. There is a complicated (and sometimes ignored) system of ethics that scanlators follow in order to respect the artists they admire that mostly boils down to “We will only make available works that you cannot already buy in English — and as soon as English-language versions are published, we will remove our scanlations and encourage you to buy the for-pay books.”

As a creator myself (with limited financial resources), I have mixed feelings about scanlations. On the one hand, I do believe that increasing the exposure of niche works can ultimately benefit creators and publishers commercially (which is why I am making and will continue to make available free downloads of some of our comics.) But, on the other hand, no one has asked any of these creators for their permission to post these works — and I certainly wouldn’t be happy to have that decision taken out of my hands. And no matter how you frame it, it is piracy — and at least according to a panel discussion I heard at YaoiCon, this sort of online piracy has devastated the manhwa market in Korea.

So please, please, please — if you like what you see in some of these links, do take the time to compensate the original creators. A few bucks from you makes a huge difference in how much future work they can create. (Check out the sections below for ways to find and pay creators for bara downloads.)

OTHER SOURCES

First off, if you’re liking this bara stuff, let me humbly suggest you take a moment to check out our comics, like Tough: “No Kissing” which has a hot guy-on-guy painted cover and art and is a free download for our subscribers. Just saying…

Other great places (last update 5/8/10):

BARA – Club (+18) [Yaoi]
- A new discovery. Lots of hot images, lots of links to scanlated Bara. A nice forum to talk about it all. You have to register to get access to the links, but the process is quick and painless. Should be your second click after Baralover.
The Bara Forums
- Currently active discussions and postings on Bara (with lots of images), worth your time
Bara Club on MyAnimeList
SoupGoblin’s Stash
- A variety of bara-themed posts and images (includes some photos, some furry, but lots of bara art), definitely worth your time
Daphira Scans
- Not updated since 2007 but some good work
The baralovers community at LiveJournal
Baragumi – Social Network for Bara Artists and their Admirers
- Was on Ning, now self-hosted, still active
1GayChan
- Anonymous posting board, fairly active. What it calls “yaoi” most would call “bara”. I see some for-pay stuff on here that’s easy to get from the original artists (like Jin-KS which you can find on the English-language DLSite). If you like what you see here, do the right thing and get the original files from the artists themselves. A few dollars from you makes a huge difference in their ability to create more work.
BARA Board
- Another anonymous posting board. Again, compensate the original creators if you like their work.
TAKU HiRAKU’s iLLUSTLATiON SiTE
- Creator site with explicit bara showing oral sex and, interestingly, x-ray vision art that gets around Japanese censorship (NON-ENGLISH)
ウホクエ
- chubby bara, and all by the same artist (I think) NON-ENGLISH
Bara Lover
- Looks like a nice site with recent work (scans), but I encountered some annoying pop-ups and it opens a new window with every thumbnail you click (also annoying) unless you’re smart enough to click on the first thumbnail to start the Slideshow mode (and there can be multiple slideshows per thumbnail gallery, grr), so use at your own risk. Disabling Flash in your browser helps.
stupidgit.net
- Link broken as of 5/8/10 – hopefully will come back to life

Buying Bara E-Books

Right now, as far as I know, there isn’t any bara being published in English (yet!). And it’s hard to get enthusiastic about (and ultimately want to support) work you can’t read. So, I will continue to look at Bara scanlations. But after sampling a bara author’s work through a scanlation, I try to do the right thing — I look for ways to get the creator money. This is both to balance out the free-work I have enjoyed and also to offer the creator support so they can create future work to enjoy. How do I compensate these creators? I buy their Japanese-language works. And there are actually a couple ways you can easily do this.

First off, some Japanese manga creators offer for-pay downloads of their work — and this work is often more recent stuff that hasn’t been scanlated yet.

Let’s say you’ve become quite taken with Kowmeiism’s comic “Judo Boy” (the opening image in this post [of that guy with the sword] is also by the same creator). A Google search brings you to his Web site and there you find a Download link page with some of his for-pay e-books. You click on one of the DiGiket download links and — after clicking through the “Yes I Am 18″ button [the first blue one on the left] — are brought to the DiGiket online manga marketplace page to download one of his manga.

At this point you might feel stymied — everything’s in Japanese, you see, and it’s not intuitively obvious how you’d pay for his work, let alone download it. Luckily, there is a simply excellent English-language walkthrough for how to download manga through DiGiket in a journal post over at elee0228′s DeviantArt page. Follow the instructions over at that page and it’s easy as pie to download DRM-free and very high-quality manga art.

(The payment method recommended by elee0228 is WebMoney — a Japanese form of electronic cash that uses special alphanumeric codes that you enter on payment Web sites. It’s very easy to use and it ensures your buying choices will be completely anonymous. In order to get myself some WebMoney to spend, I used kanetrade.com which provided me the WebMoney codes nearly instantaneously and whom, based on that experience, I feel comfortable recommending. They sell WebMoney codes in 1000 point increments and Digiket is smart enough to prompt you for a 2nd WebMoney code for the balance remaining if your first code doesn’t have enough to cover the cost of the manga download, so there is no need to sweat not having exact Yen amounts for the codes you buy.)

UPDATE 2-27-10: Also, for extra easiness, be sure to check out the Yaoi section (sidebar on the left under “Interests/Fetishes”) of the English-language DLSite. Lots of options from Japanese creators, descriptions in English, you can use a regular credit card. Easy, peasy. Should be your first stop. (Just ignore the boobies on the home page… )

Buying Physical Bara Books

But what if a creator doesn’t have an e-book available over at DiGiket (or you can’t find it)?

A great place to get hardcopy Bara books is over at Rainbow Shoppers. They have a wide assortment of bara works that you can order including works by creators you’ll find on the Baralover page such as Takeshi Matsu and Tsukasa Matsuzaki. Just click on the “Comic” link in the left sidebar over at Rainbow Shoppers and work your way through the links it provides. They accept VISA and Mastercard and will ship to any location worldwide.

(Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you that I actually have not yet ordered from Rainbow Shoppers, but I know those who have and they’ve had good experiences. Of course, all the books are still in Japanese. But the artwork is still gorgeous — and if you really appreciate a creator’s work, don’t you want to do the right thing and help make sure they can afford to keep making it? I thought you did. )

I’ll Keep Updating This List — with your help!

So I hope you found this post a useful introduction to getting your hands on some of that bara art that we’ve all been hearing rumblings about for some time. If you know of any other links that should be included in this post, please let me know in the comments!

(UPDATE: Tina Anderson has a nice listing of Japanese language sites and sources for bara at her blog — which is especially handy as it includes direct links to creators’ Web sites, including noting who sells at DiGiket. She also turned me on to the Top Ten List of Gay Comics over at Rainbow Shoppers.)

Hey! Want links to full-color yaoi/bara comics sent to you — for free? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link to our first comic right away!

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• Curious about the next comic we’ll be sending out to our newsletter subscribers? Then read all about our High School rescue-and-romance Boys Love story, Tough!
• Wondering why the heck I’m making a yaoi book? Check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

My very good friend Bill S. recently sent me a link to an article by creator Joss Whedon (whom I greatly admire and occasionally take to task) titled “Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death.” (WARNING: Heavy, but important content — as if the title alone didn’t clue you into that…)

You should read it. It’s a well-written piece and fits nicely into a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

By creating this book, am I making the world less safe for women?

What This Article Is Not

Before I get into the reasons why that question is on my mind, let me get a couple things out of the way right up front. First off, to paraphrase another creator I both admire and hold to high standards, Aaron Sorkin: the sheer tonnage of what I don’t know about sexism and what it’s actually like to be a woman in this world could stop a herd of oxen in its tracks.

FACT: I’m a guy who dates guys and most of my activism has been on the behalf of gay youth and equal rights for gays and lesbians. Now, that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit on my hands about something this important, but I wanted to make it clear that I’m speaking from my heart here, not from a position of authority.

Secondly, I will not use this article as an excuse for hand-wringing and lament — the question of what responsibilities a creator has to his or her fellow human beings (in this case, over half the world’s population) is one I take very seriously. I might not say anything new here, but I am committed to finding the right answers. Knowing that violence and hatred towards women is one of the biggest challenges of our day is important, but more important is asking: what am I going to do about it?

Yaoi 911: Weapon of Sexism?

As a creator, I focus on writing what I consider to be compelling, entertaining stories and take stock of the thematic content of what I’ve written afterwards. And while I’m quite pleased with the stories I’ve come up with for this first book, there’s been a little something niggling at the back of my brain, something about how I’m representing women.

In these comics, my heroes are all male. In fact, most of the characters in my stories are male (in “A Shot in the Dark” they are all male). Nothing wrong with showing a guy being a hero — and this is yaoi, after all — but it did feel a little strange to exclude, you know, half the world’s population. So, in “Artifice”, I created Dr. Clarice Maven. But the hero slots were taken up by my romantic leads so if she was going to take a leading role that meant she had to be the antagonist — y’know, the villain.

Now, as written, Dr. Maven is very smart and powerful — so at least I avoid the basest of sexual stereotypes — but still, she’s not on the side of angels. And these are action stories, so the threat of violence is always there. The threat of violence against a smart, capable woman and, because she’s the villain, your sympathies are going to be with the male heroes, not with her.

Joss Whedon writes:

Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I’m not going to coyly ask “Could my story be contributing to that culture?” The truth is, on some level, it does. Perhaps the effect is subtle, but then so is the common use of the word “gay” in popular culture for anything negative or weird. And that certainly had an effect on me growing up.

First Amendment: Rah! Rah! Rah!

So what about that? Do I think there should be laws, censorship, perhaps a governing council of wise hate-free elders to tell creators what is and is not ok for them to create?

No — not only is that unworkable, but I’m certain that the end result would create more evil in the world, rather than less. I might not be as hard core a defender of Freedom of Speech as my good friend Bill S., but the issue is still very dear to my heart: so long as no one in real life is placed in clear and serious danger — think death threats — creators should be able to create whatever they want without fear of censorship.

And in my opinion, potentially contributing to social injustice, while reprehensible, shouldn’t lower the legal axe. If for no other reason — and there are other reasons — than that such works can get us talking about the issues. And hopefully, through reasoned discussion, change the world for the better.

A Creator’s First Responsibility

In fact, I would go so far as to say that, for a writer of narrative fiction, trying to make the world a better place should take second place to good storytelling. And by good storytelling, I mean a commitment to creating compelling characters who feel real doing interesting things.

We’ve all read books or seen films where a creator tried to shoe-horn in a social message that went contrary to the reality of the piece and we are well-familiar with the results — tedious works that fail as art and as instruments for positive change.

And of course, a commitment to showing what is interesting and true about people can contribute to understanding and thus further social progress in itself. That is, by not creating propaganda, artists are often more successful in changing the world. Not every gay person is harmless and non-predatory. Not every black person is a shining role model for their community. Not every bigot hates their kids and kicks their dog. To only write works that say otherwise is lying. And by telling the truth, by showing both victims and perpetrators as human, you force your audience to identify with them, to find traits of what they were so sure was the “other” in their own hearts and minds. And I believe that that can only help the fight to end prejudice, bigotry and violence.

But not every story that has the ring of truth has the potential to bring us together. I haven’t even seen the trailer for it, but who knows? Perhaps the film that Joss refers to in his article — “Captivity” — is close enough to real life to count. Maybe it carefully and truthfully narrates exactly how a beautiful woman would behave if held prisoner and tortured for days.

What about these works and their creators?

Creator or Human Being?

I’m reminded of a course I took while a student at the University of Salzburg called “Science and Ethics.” (I actually took a number of ethics classes while studying there and it was a fascinating experience. And of course, the Austrians know a thing or two about how a deep commitment to a scientific or political pursuit can be used as an excuse to justify the most abhorrent actions.)

The point of the class was very simple: As a scientist, your first and really only commitment is in discovering scientific truths by any means necessary. But as a human being, you are responsible for how your actions impact others — and that responsibility trumps your role as a scientist.

A creator’s first and really only commitment should be to tell a great and effective story. But as human beings, we have a responsibility to carefully consider the impact of our works on the larger world, on our fellow human beings. And that responsibility trumps.

This Human Being’s Responsibility

I think it’s dangerous to judge people on the basis on any one action and dangerous to judge a creator by viewing any individual work in isolation. And frankly, it’s arrogant to think that any one story will have that big an impact on the world stage. But a number of pieces over a creative career, a body of work is another matter.

I look at the stories I’ve created for this first book through the lens of sexism and, honestly, I think I can do better. They’re good stories, I think people will like them and I don’t think they’ll make the world a darker, more dangerous place. Or at least not much darker and more dangerous. But I absolutely think I can do better on the next ones.

What that will look like exactly? The guys still need to be the heroes, right? Or do they? Is it enough to have a plucky and capable female best friend or is that just as insidious as the sexless and funny gay best friend stock character in Hollywood movies? Truthfully, I don’t know what the right answers are yet.

But as a creator, it’s my universe and I get to choose what truths I’ve noticed about people, about women, about men relating to women, that I will share. I know in my heart there has to be a way to tell hot, fun, sexy, compelling yaoi stories that can make this world safer for the cool female audience who will read my works — that I can still make telling great stories my top priority and yet be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

A good creator should be able to do it. And this human being sees it as his responsibility.


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Learn More!

• Want to hear some of my early thoughts on yaoi and sexism? Check out Should Yaoi Be Just For Women?
• Curious about how to create your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Want to see how our first comic is coming along? (Or just want to look at some pics of the cute boys fighting monsters and making out?) Click on over to Yaoi Art: “A Shot in the Dark” Inks! (Age 18 and over, please!)
• Had enough with the heavy for now? Read a review of a great yaoi comedy: Yaoi Review: Challengers by Hinako Takanaga!