Pornography’s impact on transnational models of media aesthetics and governance has been well documented from a Euro-American perspective. This book contributes to the field of pornography studies by rethinking the cultural impact of pornography as audio-visual and online media from an East Asian perspective. It focuses on pornographies made and consumed in and across Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong. The chapters examine under-reported East Asian cultures of pornography, not only to uncover phenomena from within this region but also to challenge and fine-tune existing academic research networks and paradigms. This book proposes that the lived experience of producing and consuming various pornographies throughout East Asia may extend, nuance, challenge, or even affirm the dominant Euro-American understandings of pornography that are becoming increasingly axiomatic within pornography studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field of study. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Porn Studies.

This book examines the visual-sexual turn in social media discourses in the field of online activism with a particular focus on the extraordinary protest years of 2018-2020. Presenting a socially engaged theory of "tit-for-tat media" and including case-studies on activist movements such as the Euro-American alt-right, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and revolutionary artists in China, this study reveals how visual cultures, including gendered or sexualized imagery, are utilized to influence public perception. By presenting in-depth explorations of online ethnography, interviews with activists and studies of the political histories and urban protests-environments, the volume uncovers how local artists, netizens and citizens are using media and digital imagery in contemporary activism. Covering a broad spectrum of social media content, from hyper-cute manga and cartoons to satirical pornography and sexualized hate-speech, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, political communication, sexuality and gender studies.

This book examines the visual-sexual turn in social media discourses in the field of online activism with a particular focus on the extraordinary protest years of 2018-2020. Presenting a socially engaged theory of "tit-for-tat media" and including case-studies on activist movements such as the Euro-American alt-right, the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, and revolutionary artists in China, this study reveals how visual cultures, including gendered or sexualized imagery, are utilized to influence public perception. By presenting in-depth explorations of online ethnography, interviews with activists and studies of the political histories and urban protests-environments, the volume uncovers how local artists, netizens and citizens are using media and digital imagery in contemporary activism. Covering a broad spectrum of social media content, from hyper-cute manga and cartoons to satirical pornography and sexualized hate-speech, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of media and communication studies, political communication, sexuality and gender studies.

An important story about fears and ways to deal with them. For worriers ages 5 years and up. Do you ever feel scared about something that might happen? Do you worry a little bit, and then more and more? Sometimes little worry thoughts grow into monster thoughts. So how can you tame them? By hanging upside down so they fall out of your ears? By hiding and hoping they won’t find you? Maybe there’s a better way . . . 

The boys love (BL) genre was created for girls and women by young female manga (comic) artists in early 1970s Japan to challenge oppressive gender and sexual norms. Over the years, BL has seen almost irrepressible growth in popularity and since the 2000s has become a global media phenomenon, weaving its way into anime, prose fiction, live-action dramas, video games, audio dramas, and fan works. BL’s male–male romantic and sexual relationships have found a particularly receptive home in other parts of Asia, where strong local fan communities and locally produced BL works have garnered a following throughout the region, taking on new meanings and engendering widespread cultural effects. Queer Transfigurations is the first detailed examination of the BL media explosion across Asia. The book brings together twenty-one scholars exploring BL media, its fans, and its sociocultural impacts in a dozen countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia—and beyond. Contributors draw on their expertise in an array of disciplines and fields, including anthropology, fan studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, literature, media studies, political science, and sociology to shed light on BL media and its fandoms. Queer Transfigurations reveals the far-reaching influences of the BL genre, demonstrating that it is truly transnational and transcultural in diverse cultural contexts. It has also helped bring about positive changes in the status of LGBT(Q) people and communities as well as enlighten local understandings of gender and sexuality throughout Asia. In short, Queer Transfigurations shows that, some fifty years after the first BL manga appeared in print, the genre is continuing to reverberate and transform lives.

Netporn delves into the aesthetics and politics of sexuality in the era of do-it-yourself (DIY) Internet pornography. Katrien Jacobs, drawing on digital media theory and interviews with Web porn producers and consumers, offers an unprecedented critical analysis of Web culture as digital artistry and of the corresponding heightened government surveillance and censorship of the Internet. Netporn features Web users who question the goals of global commercial porn industries-whether they are engaged in Usenet fringes, video blogging, peer-to-peer distribution, porn art collectives, or decadent amateurism. Emphasizing gender and cultural differences, Jacobs shows how the creative uses of netporn images and services are important ways of exploring or redefining the 'network body' and indispensable ingredients of a maturing network society.