ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how thinking gender and sexuality transnationally can help us make sense of “queer” media, practices and performances proliferating across East Asia and Southeast Asia through two prominent examples – South Korean popular music (K-pop) and “boys love” (BL) media. Thinking gender and sexuality transnationally is useful for making sense of the overlapping processes of queer K-pop and BL media fandom, consumption and (re)production, whether this means fans identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or cis-heterosexual. After situating K-pop within the spread and global phenomenon of the Korean Wave and its androgynous elements, the chapter provides an overview of queer K-pop consumption and performance in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. Beyond Japan, transnational BL fan cultures are situated in specific cultural, historical and geographical contexts and need to be interpreted differently from Japanese BL fandom.
