Police arrest scores of Chinese women writing 'boy love' fiction for money
www.abc.net.au
Police in China are arresting female authors of homosexual romance novels, in a widespread crackdown on the "boys love" fiction genre.

(boy’s love writers, so i guess more yaoi then slash) admit i didn’t read the whole article because it seems ridiculous and western reporting on China is like 90% fabrications. someone educate me on whatever this is. is it conservative local governments doing local government shit?

my partner loves this shit especially from China and i don’t want to inform her about some made up BS designed to radicalize the slash and yaoi community against the CPC

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    6 days ago

    This section caught my attention:

    spoiler

    On Chinese social media, people have accused police of “offshore fishing” — a phrase that refers to local police who have allegedly summoned suspects from other parts of the country for questioning for financial gain.

    The phrase “offshore fishing” was censored last week on social media platforms in China, including Weibo and WeChat. [how do they confirm if specific words or phrases are actually banned? They don’t specify in this article]

    Haitang, the website popular with fans of boys love fiction, has also been suspended until July 8.

    A spokesperson for Haitang said they were working on improving their services.

    I will also note that they mention China’s obscenity laws, but don’t mention much about the content of the summoned authors’ works, other than the homosexual nature of the content. I’m not a fan of obscenity laws as a concept, but the whole article frames the gay content as the focal point (calling it a “widespread crackdown on the ‘boys love’ genre in China,” for example) when that may not even be what’s causing the issue.

    Sections like “the scale of action has been widespread, with estimates that at least 100 writers have been affected,” also make me wonder, is this an exceptionally small genre? Because if it’s really a genre-based crackdown, I’d think China would have considerably more than a few hundred people, even for the tiniest genre.

    Again, I’m no supporter of obscenity laws, and I prize creative freedom in a society, but this seems like a re-framing of obscenity charges as an anti-gay crackdown.

    • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      ahhh ok more nuanced but still shit. personally I can’t wait for China to shake off the rusty chains of social conservatism and adopt Cuba’s family code or their own version of it.

      plus it will fuck with the ACP nazbol types and technofeudalists that think China is some kind of model anti-woke hyper productive state