I Want My Boys' Love
This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on November 28, 2006 Sign up now!
by Kai-Ming Cha, PW Comics Week -- Publishers Weekly, 11/28/2006
Tina Anderson is an ordinary American soccer mom who takes her kids to practice, empties the dishwasher from time to time for her husband—and writes boys' love comics. Yaoi, also known as boys' love or BL, are manga works aimed at female readers that depict love and often explicit sex between men.
Her graphic novel Only Words, illustrated by Caroline Monaco, is forthcoming next spring from Iris Press. Roulette, a story written by Anderson and illustrated by Laura Carboni, is serialized in DramaQueen's anthology, RUSH. Anderson is also well-known around the boys' love blogosphere for her blog Guys, Guns, and Yaoi (http://gynocrat.org). PW Comics Week talked with Anderson about the local boys' love scene and the power of yaoi.
PW Comics Week: What was your introduction to boys' love?
Tina Anderson: My first time seeing it was in 1988—I was in a Jewish private school. My friend's father had a store in New York City where he sold magazines, Asian magazines—imports as well, candies, gifts. He went on buying trips so she always brought backcool stuff. She brought back a BL doujinshi of Tsubasa—from Azaki—and it blew my mind. It really awakened something in me. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I'd never seen anything like it. Men and men and sex that didn't compromise my gender awareness in any way. Some erotica is going to have you thinking second thoughts. If you can look at something that arouses you and you don't have to identify with anyone—if you take the female out of the equation—it makes it more enjoyable. At least for me. Some women don't like male-male erotica.
PWCW: Yaoi and manga in general seem to inspire women to make comics. What is it about the material coming from Japan that makes people want to make comics themselves?
TA: Manga fans are a creative breed. I think at the recent MangaNext [convention] someone said that manga culture is really a creative culture and most cons that focus on manga specifically are very fan and fan-activity driven. If you don't allow it to thrive, fans won't gravitate toward it. I think the object of first loving manga and then finding something in yaoi to goof on or gush over does awaken creative juices. I always wrote short stories. Being around [fellow yaoi fans] drew me into writing BL. These women wanted to express themselves the same way I did. It drives you to do the best you can, to be competitive. "Let's see how good we can do, how better we can do." We're all doing it with the same subject and entertaining each other. In between book releases, you gotta do something. It takes forever for the books to get here.
PWCW: There have been an increasing number of "yaoi 101" articles in publications aimed at the general public. You've been fairly outspoken about the media attention that yaoi has been getting.
TA: I feel like a kid asked to justify what turns me on. Like [the media is] a parent trying to get a handle on me. I've seen single friends of ours come to our house and try to understand Bionicles. I always think, "Why are you trying to understand an 11-year-old? Have your own kids. You have your thing, he has his." Why does [the media and others who don't read yaoi] want to understand [yaoi]? Get the books, read the books. And if you still don't get what it's all about, then ask me.
PWCW: The most common question asked is "Why do women love boys' love?" What is the power of man sex? Why does it work for women?
TA: Boys' love has always allowed me to [have sex with] other guys in a fashion that I'm comfortable with in a fantasy realm. I don't have to think about my role as a sexual woman when I write it or read it. I can get turned on by it as fantasy, and it allows you to distance yourself from the fantasy.
The brain is the sexual organ here. It's the same when you see hentai [straight heterosexual pornographic comics]—it's visually stimulating. But I couldn't put myself into that position [of the woman in hentai]. When I see a woman in a sexual way in straight media, I do too much self-examination. If I don't, then I feel guilty. With yaoi, there's no woman in there at all. When I look at it, it's something hot, sexy, fun, and I don't have to feel guilty about it. Women aren't wired to separate themselves from sex as recreation. Yaoi allows for that kind of enjoyment—for visual [sexual] recreation without the self-examination. That's what's so beautiful about it. Women don't have to think about being the ones used and abused and played with.
People wonder why yaoi fans/women are so passionate about it. The kind of liberation to enjoy pornography, to enjoy recreational love and sex without having to put yourself in it is amazing. It's euphoric. It's a breath of fresh air. You don't have to think about your place in the sexual world. You may or may not do that, but you know what your position is. In the West, it's not so crystal clear, but in other places it is crystal and it causes resentment.
PWCW: What do you see as the future of the category?
TA: I see the tipping point for boys' love from Japan coming. Maybe in the next two or three years, it will reach the high-water mark—not because of lack of interest, but [the market] will stabilize. I don't see it being more than a niche [market]. I don't think you'll ever see boys' love from Dark Horse Comics. But boys' love books are going to be the catalyst for stores to start placing manga in categories based on maturity—they're going to have to.
As more and more niche yaoi players are going to stores, as more distributors take on these titles, bookstores are going to have to make the effort to separate it from the regular manga. You can't just have a shelf dedicated to boys' love books because of people's perceptions about homosexuality. And you can't put it in the gay/lesbian section of the store where fans won't look for yaoi—yaoi fans want to go to the manga section. [The bookstore chain] Books-A-Million is setting up a section for mature titles and then taking it from there. Boys' love will be a catalyst for this.
