“Every word I wrote comes back to me in the face.” This testimony, shared under pseudonym on the Weibo social network, sums up the feeling of dread that has grabbed dozens of young Chinese women in recent weeks. Their crime? Having written or published love and sex stories between men, a literary genre called “Danmei”whose popularity continues to grow in China, especially with a female audience, summarizes an article in the BBC.
Since February 2025, at least thirty authors – all young women in their twenties – have been arrested, sometimes humiliated publicly, often interviewed. Some are still in detention, others under deposit pending their trial. Their common point: having published their stories on Haitang Literature City, a platform based in Taiwan and specializing in homosexual love stories. Their works (which are part of a movement that appeared in the 1990s and inspired at the origin of Japanese manga) explore historical, fantastic or futuristic universes, but always with the same recipe: love stories between men, sometimes spicy with explicit scenes.
In Xi Jinping China, gay erotic literature is in the viewfinder of power. Officially, it is a question of fighting “pornography”: the law sanctions the production and dissemination of “obscene contents”, with sentences that can exceed ten years in prison if the author draws a financial profit. But in fact, censorship strikes the homosexual fiction much harder than heterosexual stories, even very explicit. The works of Mo Yan, Nobel Prize in literature in 2012, are full of sexual scenes, but remain over the counter.
This two weights, two measures, is denounced by activists and lawyers who mobilize to defend the authors. On Weibo, the hashtag #HaitangAutorsarrested exceeded 30 million views before being erased by censorship. Messages of support, legal advice, testimonies disappear as the police tighten the vice. Even readers are sometimes summoned for interrogation.
A space of freedom … and danger
Why so much severity? Because the danmeifar from being a simple niche literature, has become a social phenomenon. It offers women a coded space of expression, in reverse of patriarchal standards. In these stories, men can be vulnerable and love without shame. For many young authors, it is a way of escaping from a daily life where female desire is taboo and where marriage and birth rate are presented as national imperatives.
The success of gender is such that some novels have risen to the top of international sales and that television adaptations, as The Untamed (2019) or Word of Honor (2021), propelled young actors to the rank of stars. But this popularity is disturbing. For Beijing, the rise of danmei would be an obstacle to birth, a factor of “moral decadence” and a threat to the traditional family order.
Several authors posted by the authorities have testified to their arrest on social networks. One tells that he was arrested in the middle of the class, in front of his comrades. Another describes the shame of having been undressed for a search, photographed and questioned. All say fear: that of seeing their lives ruined, of disappointing their parents, never being able to write again. Some have seen their meager winnings – some thousand yuan, a few hundred euros – transformed into “evidence” of their crime.
Faced with repression, solidarity is organized: lawyers offer free consultations and support groups are formed online. But the lead screed is real. The slightest sexual metaphor can be interpreted as a provocation. And fear of reprisals and prosecution may be enough to discourage certain authors. Exactly what the authorities want.
