Slash Fan Fiction in China: Negotiating Gender and Sexuality in Chinese Female Fan Communities and Their Fan Texts.

Abstract

Slash fan fiction, a fan-generated literature centring on male-male romantic and/or erotic relationships based on characters from media texts, is widely popular in China. Analysing the Chinese Harry Potter (HP) slash fandom on the Slash Fan Fiction Network (SFFN, pseudonym), this thesis examines how Chinese female slash fans negotiate gender and sexuality issues in the context of cultural globalisation, domestic censorship, and the Chinese commercial online literature market, as well as the impact of their slash practices on their everyday lives in mainland China. Based on a close reading of selected Chinese HP slash fan fiction and interactions between female writers and readers on the SFFN and interviewing twelve Chinese HP slash fan writers and readers, this research, undertaken between 2016 and 2021, explores how Chinese female fans creatively rework their favourite HP texts to express their shared sexual desires and fantasies, which negotiate and even subvert hegemonic heteronormative gender and sexuality discourses. Meanwhile, I will demonstrate that going beyond leisure and entertainment, writing and reading HP slash fan fiction has become a significant part of female fans’ everyday lives, and also affects their understanding and support of LGBTQ+ groups and politics in their offline lives.