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INTEREST: Queer Japanese Vlogger Discusses Boys-Love in English-Subtitled Video

Interesting of this article for emphasising the queer part of Matsumoto's identity, over the fact that he is a gay man, which is a lot more relevant to the topic of BL manga. There are a lot of people under the queer umbrella whose opinions on this subject wouldn't really mean much of anything, myself included (although queer sure ain't my label).

Songster01 wrote:

Multiple studies of slash readers and writers demonstrate that the largest group of readers and writers are bi- or pansexual.

Interesting that you bring up slash. Personally I’ve never taken an interest in it at all. But it was through a friend that was into it that I discovered m/m stuff from Japan.

If anybody's curious there are academics in Japan and other countries that have researched and written about BL and fandom:

Professor, translator and girl’s manga scholar Rachel Thorn has a paper from 15 years ago that talks about slash and yaoi.
https://www.en.matt-thorn.com/single-post/2018/02/17/Girls-and-Women-Getting-Out-of-Hand-The-Pleasure-and-Politics-of-Japans-Amateur-Comics-Community

The book Boys Love Manga and Beyond has several perspectives from across the globe including a translated paper from gender and comics theory scholar Dr. Yukari Fujimoto who is often quoted and somewhat taken out of context by others. Also there's a paper on fudanshi by Dr. Kazumi Nagaike.

Writer and Professor Dru Pagliassotti has several academic papers in Reading BL in the West about 10 years ago found through survey 41% of respondents speaking English identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or other or had no interest in sex. The Italian language survey had a little over 29%.
http://www.participations.org/Volume%205/Issue%202/5_02_pagliassotti.htm

Dr. Anna Madill has a number of papers. I’m not sure if she’s updated numbers of her BL survey she keeps open but last I saw numbers from one of her papers respondents identified 34% heterosexual, 22% bisexual, 13% poly/pansexual, 12% not sure, 10% other, 9% homosexual/lesbian/gay and also 8% chose other for gender.
https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

My Brother's Husband

Her short story "The Yellow Rose" is up on amazon kindle for like $3 bucks. Don't read the introduction because while it is a great essay on her life and work it also is a huge spoiler for the story down to the minor details. https://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Rose-Yoshiya-Nobuko-ebook/dp/B01G33XY1O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520123829&sr=8-1&keywords=the+yellow+rose+nobuko

Also if you want short stories by Japanese lesbians in English check out Sparkling Rain. It has an amazing introduction that covers the history of lesbian media in japan. it's a wide reaching anthology that goes all the way back to the rise of feminism in Japan with a poem by the founder of the Blue Stocking movement. It has a funny as all hell story mocking every yuri trope under the sun ..:https://www.amazon.com/Sparkling-Rain-Other-Fiction-Japan-ebook/dp/B018SQZL42/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1520123895&sr=1-4&keywords=Japanese+lesbian+anthology

Hi! I'm Masaki, the person in the video.

Hi! I'm Masaki, the person in the video. A friend of mine showed me this thread. I'm glad my video seems to have sparked some discussion among English-speaking anime/manga fans and others, here on ANN and elsewhere, about BL and the issues of representation in general. All the subtitling (yes, it's a lot of work) was worth it. Thank you all for watching the video and responding. There's just one thing I wanted to clarify, and it's about my gender/sexual identity. I said in the video I was "almost" gay because I am also bi. It's complicated, but I'm sexually attracted to both women and men, but only want to engage in sexual activities with men, and definitely only want to have a romantic relationship with men. Since I don't plan on engaging in any romantic or sexual activity/relationship whatsoever with women, I usually don't bother telling people I'm bisexual (because there's no point in them learning about my sexual arousal that will never be acted upon or even shown to other people ever at all). And my gender identity is not firmly fixed to "male," either, and I don't mind being called a they or a he. I hope that makes sense. With that said, I'm grateful to the person who pointed out here that I'm a gay man and that people should not disrespect or belittle my such self-proclaimed identity, for trying to protect me from potential mislabeling. I thank both of you for trying to respect my identity, in different ways because of a lack of clarification on my end. Hope you have a wonderful day.