Negotiating “misogyny”: Chinese female audience’s reception to Danmei in the context of emerging feminist discourses

Danmei, commonly known as Boys Love (BL) or Yaoi, serves as an alternative form of gender expression that allows female audiences to reimagine agency or male figures beyond normative constraints. However, Danmei has recently sparked feminist debates on Chinese social media. Feminist critiques emphasize that its popularity is fueled by internalized misogyny, as it often compels female audiences to adopt male-centric stereotypes, while in ways that displace and marginalize their own subjectivity. To investigate how Danmei audiences perceive and interpret this cultural tension, this study employs in-depth interviews with 18 female participants. The findings reveal how participants paradoxically engage with the internalization of patriarchal disciplining that may reproduce in Danmei, while simultaneously granting compensatory affect by relegating their subjectivity to the margins. These ongoing conversations reflect a broader tendency in Chinese feminist discursive tensions, which increasingly prioritizes overtly confrontational and political resistance over structurally limited subversion.