Kifah Hannah’s lecture “Ethics and Desire in Contemporary Levantine Literature” reminded me a lot of the homoerotic comic books (known as Boys Love or Yaoi) from Japan that have become popular in the US and other parts of the world. Kifah Hanna spoke about a love for beautiful young boys and stories that depict foreigners coming to teach young boys about homosexuality. Both of these themes are very prevalent in Japanese homoerotic comics. Often, the object of affection within the story is a young boy who is beautiful and supple (the only thing differentiating him from being a female is the genital region). There are also many stories in which these beautiful young boys are saved or (more often) held captive by foreigners. For the most part, these foreigners are English noblemen or Maharajas from India. The young boys are taught about homosexual love from these older men and come to accept their own sexuality.
Because she spoke mainly about homosexual relationships in novels written by women, I couldn’t help but make the connection. It made me wonder if the ways in which these women wrote about male homosexuality was also a way to express sexual desires that are normally hindered by oppressive female responsibilities (having to marry, give birth, and serving their husband) in the way that Japanese women express themselves through stories of male homoeroticism. Could these female writers find freedom in exploring sexuality through the body of their male characters?
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