What is it about?
The literary form of danmei, in which male–male romance and/or erotica is portrayed, is a flourishing genre in China which has received significant atten- tion from academia in recent years. This article focuses on a notorious subgenre of danmei, A/B/O fiction, which introduces three additional sexes, alpha, beta and omega, into mankind, alongside the male/female binary sex/gender system. By focusing on a popular but atypical example of this subgenre, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of how female danmei writers constantly question the hierarchical and heteronormative system in the A/B/O world and interrogate the fixed identities of gender, sexuality and class, by imagining love, sex and intimacy among male protagonists. Drawing on Judith Butler’s gender performative theory and resignification politics, this article suggests that the behaviour of the characters in these texts engenders reciprocal and equal rela- tionships, reverses the various heteropatriarchal norms through the employment of technology, and questions the compulsory regulatory power embodied in the biological pheromone in A/B/O. Simultaneously, this study also identifies the notion of ‘love’ itself as a limiting factor of this genre of male–male romantic and/or erotic writing.
Why is it important?
By engaging with Judith Butler’s (1990) performativity theory and resignification politics, I suggest that BZB engenders the potential to question the regulatory power that determines fixed gender and sexual identities in the hierarchical and heteronormative A/B/O setting. I also draw on detailed analyses on the atypical elements of this A/B/O fiction, which concentrates on the long-ignored beta’s struggle and their love story with an alpha (in contrast to normative A/B/O stories, which tend to centre on romantic and erotic relationships between alphas and omegas), to eluci- date the manner in which the author creatively and critically challenges the normative settings of the A/B/O world with respect to gender, sexuality and class, as well as how BZB deconstructs the binary alpha/omega system and reconstructs the dynamics among alpha, beta and omega by depicting the love stories of two couples. At the same time, this article reveals that danmei writers’ explorations in this subgenre have also remained within the bounds of the romance fantasy which proclaims ‘love’ as the overarching power to eliminate every obstacles.