I came across this post on Facebook yesterday, and I wrote a long response in a comment on it, and read some other interesting replies. I felt it would make for a good discussion here in this group, so I am sharing it here. (FYI they said the post was assisted by a chatbot as English is not their first language.)
This was my response (split here into 3 sections for easier perusing):
- CENSORSHIP
I am a western reader. So first, here is my Chinese friend's response when I sent this to her. "I'd much rather that the aesthetics come from the culture, and not censorship. if it's the latter, then it's like bonsai - cool to look at, but extremely unnatural how it's formed. ...Also, erotica is only a part of the censorship. the more insidious part is that it affects which topics people feel comfortable writing about, and how characters are portrayed."
I had already thought those two things. Of course the main problem people have with this censorship is not its impact on story content, but the negative message it sends to society about being anything other than heterosexual. This is actually LGBTQ censorship's main purpose (in any country); they openly state that they want to promote "traditional family values" and discourage "deviation" and "unnatural" behavior (just as is done by conservative governments in the west). And even far worse is the horribly cruel treatment danmei writers are receiving, being massively fined and jailed with long sentences!
But the secondary problem is that creators are constrained from including things they may want to include not for sex in itself, but because sexual aspects are part of the story they want to tell. Sex is a primary drive of all humans with a very primal role in the human experience, and to leave it out because they have to can stunt the work. It is not that "we are being robbed" of sex, but that we might be robbed of the full story authors want to tell, which is shown clearly by seeing the same author's writing before and after stronger censorship took hold. And the biggest problem is not even that we are being robbed, but that creators are being robbed of their freedom to create what they choose.
The books that were NOT censored have those same good qualities that you attribute to censorship! Sure, creativity can happen due to constraints. But it clearly happens just fine without it. And no amount of creativity due to constraints is worth the many bad things about censorship. Do you think authors would be happy to know that you are defending the cause of their oppression and repression this way?
- WESTERNERS
It's not true that the main (or only) thing Westerners care about in these stories is the sex. Generalizations about any group are always untrue, just as untrue as sweeping generalizations about Chinese people (which ironically your post also contains). If it were true that we all operate only "below the belt," danmei wouldn't have gotten so obsessively popular here, and instead we'd stick to other countries' BL, which has plenty of it. No fans I know of ever thought the genre is "purely intended to be erotica." In fact a huge if not the MAIN reason Westerners love danmei is that the stories are not just romance but encompass so many other things. (See this post proving that)
The most popular one, Heaven Official's Blessing, doesn't have any outright smut, just kissing, making out and hints at it. How could it be the most popular, if all we cared about was sex? Yes, the other most popular ones like MDZS and Erha do have sex. MDZS's isn't even until the very end though, and its adaptations that don't have it (The Untamed and the donghua), are what made danmei popular here in the first place.
I have seen many Western fans praise how the little things become more emotionally charged, like "adjusting the headband" or brushing hands, etc. We like and appreciate that subtlety. BUT!! It should not come from a place of being forced to write a certain way, and we feel badly for the creators for that.
- CHINESE FANDOM/SOCIETY
"it belongs to the Chinese people and it was made for them." I am a lurker on a lot of Chinese social media, and they appreciate sex in art just as much as anyone else. Chinese danmei fans love it when creators find ways to keep or inject the romantic/sexual aspects that would be there if not for censorship. Until the more recent crackdown, Chinese authors were putting non-censored scenes on other platforms separately, and they are very "wild" and creative in the sexual parts of their stories, especially visible in books written prior to stronger censorship. Manhua artists will put the non-censored panels up on Weibo or X. The Chinese are not less sexual than other humans. Despite the "great firewall," they consume porn just about as much as Americans.
Why are so many Chinese adaptations going off-shore to be produced in other Asian countries now? So they don't have to be censored. It's not just "toxic foreigners" in the West who want uncensored stories. And many fans and I just feel bad that those in mainland China have difficulty accessing these uncensored productions and books.
Generalizations are just never accurate, no matter who they are about. I hope I've addressed the issues with the ones made here, as well as with censorship.