Regulating counterpublics in yaoi online fan communities

The yaoi genre of erotic fan art and fiction has been a successful export from Japanese culture to the global context, particularly via internet communities. Regulatory issues of content censorship and intellectual property pose particular challenges for the governance of global online fan communities. This chapter examines the internal regulatory practices of one such community, Y! Gallery, in order to explore the role that Michael Warner’s idea of creative counterpublics play in the normative constitution of online spaces.