30 people, most of them women, arrested in China for writing gay male erotica

Authorities in China have arrested “at least 30 people”, mostly women in their 20s, for writing gay erotica in a recent crackdown on pornography.

The arrests relate to charges under China’s pornography laws for “producing and distributing obscene material”; possible jail sentences exceed 10 years if profits were made.

Authorities in Anhui and Gansu have detained dozens of young writers, including college students, accusing them of creating and distributing “obscene materials for profit,” the BBC reports.

The pushback targets gay erotic fiction, known as ‘danmei,’ which translates to ‘addicted to beauty’. It is published on the Taiwan-based platform Haitang Literature City.

The genre is popular among young Chinese women as a way of exploring romantic and sexual relationships between men. 

Online discussions and social media accounts of writers are being censored or deleted, despite legal support offers and public debate.

This recent wave of arrests is part of a broader and sustained crackdown. A Chinese author known by the pseudonym ‘Tianyi’ (real name Liu), was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison in 2018 for publishing a novel titled Occupy, which featured explicit gay sex scenes.

In 2021, China’s Cyberspace Administration announced a plan to “clean up” internet content, specifically targeting LGBTQ+ accounts.

A year later, Chinese authorities censored gay-related storylines from a re-release of US series Friends.

Any LGBTQ+ content is subject to censorship in China’s state-controlled media. 

Despite this, homosexuality is not a crime nor regarded as an illness in China, but same-sex marriage is still not recognised.