Desire for sale: Live-streaming and commercial DIY porn among Chinese gay microcelebrities

Abstract

This paper examines a nascent network of commercial DIY gay porn production by microcelebrities in China against the background of platformization, commodification, and illiberal cultural landscapes. Informed by queer Marxist theories, the paper looks at how the career trajectories of live-streamer-turned DIY gay porn actors/producers are shaped by the intertwining forces of platform capitalism, technological affordances, and state internet governance. Reflecting on the critical potential of these DIY porn production practices, it suggests that they paradoxically showcase both a willing submission to the ever-expanding logics of capitalism and means of creative negotiation with commodification and state censorship.

Desiring Wanghuang: Live Streaming, Porn Consumption and Acts of Citizenship among Gay Men in Digital China

“…Gay live streaming started gaining prominence in China in 2016 in a market dominated by a gendered structure of female streamers appealing to straight men (Cunningham et al 2019; Zhang and Hjorth 2019). Appropriating mainstream live streaming’s commercial logic, live streaming platforms such as Blued and Xian Dan Jia (henceforth XDJ) targeted gay audiences by incentivizing and monetizing emotionally and sexually charged viewer-streamer interactions (Song 2021a; Wang 2020). While this commercial strategy deepened capitalist exploitation of streamers’ immaterial labor (Zou 2018), it also provided a space for Chinese gay men to express sexual desires.…”

“…A key term associated with these practices is wanghuang . Coined after the buzzword wanghong , which means Internet ( wang ) famous ( hong , literally meaning “red”), wanghuang , which uses yellow ( huang ) to mean sexually explicit content, refers to those who publicly share pornographic pictures or videos on social media platforms (see also Song 2021a, 9). While amateur porn practices have long existed in China, especially among heterosexual individuals (see Jacobs 2012), wanghuang as a neologism registers a convergence between digital technologies and expressions of sexual desire.…”

“…Wanghuang’s trajectories responded to this change. One of the earliest groups of wanghuang consisted of veteran streamers who, after leaving gay live streaming platforms, made commercial DIY porn videos that were distributed discretely on domestic social networking platforms such as WeChat (see Song 2021a). As wanghuang practices became more common, people started to look for international platforms to share and consume porn with Virtual Private Network (VPN) technologies that enable them to circumvent censorship restrictions.…”

“…B Zai’s experience is representative of Chinese gay men’s engagement with live streaming and other new media. Although digital platforms such as live streaming afforded a key space for the presence of gay men that is impossible in conventional public arenas in China (see Song 2021a), such a space is distinctly precarious in a context where media, and queer media in particular, is subject to constant surveillance and censorship (Song 2021b). The rise and demise of live streaming thus showcase the resilient and creative ways through which Chinese gay men navigate complex and fast-changing Internet ecologies and claim sexual citizenship: legal, cultural, and bodily rights centered on sexual practice (Richardson 2000, 108).…”

“…Despite growing scholarly attention on both digital platformization (see, e.g., Cunningham et al 2019; de Kloet et al 2019) and queer cultures (see, e.g., Bao 2020; Wei 2020) in China, how Chinese gay men negotiate and embody their sexual desire in a rapidly digitizing yet heavily censored society remains an underexplored topic. If sexual cultures constitute a central force in both China’s technology and cultural policies (Jacobs 2012, 13) and in Chinese gay men’s construction of selfhood (Song 2021a), then understanding how same-sex sexual cultures emerge and flourish in the country’s illiberal landscape yields important insights about Internet governance and sexual citizenship in a digital age.…”